By arrangement, I met a beautiful woman whose interests lay in the design of destiny, miracles, and me—an average looking man whose naiveté had been savaged while working for television news in places like San Salvador and Beirut. Given our divergent views on the nature of our world, this meeting was a predictably bizarre exchange of explanatory experiences, during which Bonnie dangled mystical intrigues from her novel-in-progress, to secure my help adapting it for the screen.
Between her clear interest in my personal exploits and my figurative drooling over her in general, it was strange that she was reluctant to reveal her plot: by evening’s end I knew little more than her story involved a rescue mission of such massive proportion and intricate design that rescuers had to be stealthily recruited and indoctrinated to its methods before they were even told what they were up against. Without this preparation, she...