Andrew Sanders

Andrew Sanders is a Democratic congressman and colleague of Sal Burnstein whose practical counsel marks the limits of Burnstein’s political hopes. He tells Burnstein that the Democratic Party has moved on from the Roosevelt era and, after Burnstein leaves office, agrees to protect Manuel Arroyo Benítez, the agent who has risked his life investigating the Nazi escape network.

Political Realism and Burnstein’s Disillusionment

During Burnstein’s solitary drive after his political world has collapsed, Sanders’s earlier warning returns to him: Truman is not Roosevelt, circumstances have changed, and Burnstein should have recognized the shift. The recollection gives Sanders the role of a political realist in a moment when Burnstein is confronting the abandonment of a cause to which he had given more than twenty years. Sanders’s words do not erase Burnstein’s disappointment; they sharpen it by making clear that the change in policy was visible even before its personal consequences became unavoidable.

The novel does not present Sanders’s warning as a simple rebuke. Burnstein’s party has turned away from him, but his own anguish centers on the hope he had invested in a possibility that proved disastrously mistaken. Sanders’s blunt assessment stands against that hope, embodying the political adjustment Burnstein could neither accept nor make in time.

Acceptance of Burnstein’s Departure

When Burnstein resigns, Sanders accepts his decision with benevolent sympathy. The exchange is cordial, but it also confirms the separation between them: Burnstein is closing the doors connecting him to his former life, while Sanders remains inside the political world Burnstein is leaving. Sanders’s response offers no promise that Burnstein’s larger political struggle can be revived; its significance lies instead in the humane manner of the parting.

A Commitment to the Agent in Buenos Aires

Before Burnstein leaves, he asks Sanders to remember the author of the report they have read. Manuel Arroyo Benítez remains in Buenos Aires, surrounded by Nazis and pretending to be a war criminal himself. Burnstein emphasizes both the quality of the report and the danger its author has faced, then asks that he not be abandoned now that Burnstein can no longer look after him.

Sanders answers with an emphatic promise: the government will do what is necessary, get Arroyo out of Argentina, and offer him residence in the United States. He also recognizes Arroyo as an exceptional agent and raises the possibility that he might work for them. The assurance gives Burnstein a final concrete act of protection to secure for the man whose work has exposed the escape network. It also contrasts with the political retreat that has defeated Burnstein: although he is leaving office, he can still use his last appeal to enlist Sanders’s help for someone still in danger.