The cost was real and I’m going to put it down plainly.

Three of my father’s sources were exposed. Two had immunity within a month. The third — a former program manager at a subcontractor — was charged with unauthorized retention of classified material and took eighteen months.

She was sixty-four. I have written her twice and she has not replied and she is entirely within her rights.

My father was not charged. He was debriefed for nine days, and then he was, in the words of a man from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence whose name I never learned, “administratively resolved,” which appears to mean that four agencies agreed at a very high level that no one benefits from the trial of a seventy-one-year-old man over a decade-old decision to be dead.

His pension was not restored. His name is still on a headstone.

And I proffered.