Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA

There is a wall between us, and we can’t follow the age-old advice—communicate!—because we’re explicitly forbidden from saying anything that might suggest vulnerability in our marriage anywhere in-country. We take walks sometimes, when the tension becomes unbearable, around lakes in parks, my hands on my rounded belly as we talk out of the sides of

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“Any problem finding the place?” I ask as I grab him a beer. It’s the first in a sequence of questions I’ll ask more formally at the start of every meeting once he’s fully recruited. They go by an acronym: STINC, which stands for Security (Any run-ins with the local service on your way here?), Time (How long do we have?), Intelligence (Any emergenc

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“What about you?” he asks. “How did you come to be in this mess?” “Wanted to make sure every voice gets heard,” I say. I’ve started playing a game with myself to see how long I can go without lying to a target. Withholding information is unavoidable—for their security as well as mine—but I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding outright falsehoods. In p

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The fear injects my thoughts with venom. Beltway BS. No wonder we’re losing this war. Bunch of risk-averse desk jockeys calling the shots. The taxi jerks to a stop at an intersection, and I look up. The plastic back of the driver’s seat is covered in graffiti. Most of it is in Urdu. Some is in Arabic. One creased sticker off to the side is in Engli

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After he leaves, I fold the document into pleats, like the geisha fans we used to make in elementary school. Then I set the accordion on its end atop the toilet bowl water and light it on fire. It’s an old Russia House trick to keep the smoke to a minimum and contain the ash. When our agreement is converted to floating black flakes, I flush and set

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Dean buys pirated video games set in the same region he was deployed to back in Afghanistan. I know he misses it. I know how good he was at it. I know he gave it up to be with me. I want to tell him I’m sorry he’s stuck in this remote prison of silence, far away from his colleagues and watering holes and adrenaline-soaked purpose. But I can’t say a

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The last time we’re in Washington before my due date, I suggest that we update our E&E plan. Every CIA operative has one—an “escape and evasion plan” covering how to get out of the country if everything goes to hell. The current plan we have on file involves an extremely long swim, along with some overnights under piles of leaves and a few othe

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I find that building trust simply works better than exerting force. Detention simply works better than assassination. They are pragmatic decisions, the fastest, cheapest, most reliable way to save lives and prevent attacks. But Dean hears them as a condemnation of the moonless nights he spent in Afghanistan, firing at moving shapes to prevent them

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UNEVENTFUL AFTERNOON. APPEARS THREAT DEFERRED OR NEW TARGET ACQUIRED. KUDOS. I think of the dusty room and the wheezing baby, with her nostrils flared wide. I think of her dad, making choices to protect her—from pollution and air strikes and drones. I think about how everybody believes that they are the good guy. And how the trick of the thing is s

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