Summary

In the opening Author's Note, the author alerts the reader that some dates and names are not accurate. She adds that the purpose is to protect the guilty rather than the innocent. The closing line reads as follows: “You'll understand soon enough” (1).

Chapter 1 takes place in November 1979. There are four women on a mission – Billie, Helen, Natalie, and Mary Alice. (They are later identified as members of Project Sphinx and are called the Sphinxes.) Helen berates Billie for a tear in her hose and, as usual, has an extra. They are pretending to be stewardesses. Billie says they are about to commit murder. Helen says, “It's not murder … It's an assassination, and you can make an effort to look nice” (3). The pilot and copilot are Vance Gilchrist and Charles McSween, known as Sweeny. The men talk about movies and make suggestive...