Life Undercover

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

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

I’m not sure if Dean regrets leaving Afghanistan or regrets going there to begin with. Don’t know whether the frustration that simmers beneath the edge in his voice is trauma or longing. I question whether the fact that he’s killed means he needs to believe in war. Wonder if he remembers I became a spy to wage peace. I can’t ask him any of this alo

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

In the movies, a Glock is a spy’s best friend. In real life, it’s the humble index card, lined on one side for meeting notes, blank on the other for hand-sketched diagrams, schematics, and maps. These three-by-five-inch rectangles of sacred information are our reason for existence. Operatives have killed and died for words written on similar cards

On the way back, Jon stops me in the hall. “Doesn’t look to me like you’re too into this one,” he says. “Yeah, well, guess that’s the service part of service,” I laugh. “Nope,” he says, “the service part of service is doing the thing you’re called to do.”

He’s referring to Operation Merlin, a botched effort from a few years back that’s just been leaked to the press. In a bid to entrap the Iranians into building a nuclear weapon in contravention of the ban, we apparently arranged for an asset to pass them plans for a contraband firing mechanism, sneakily—or so we thought—adapted to render the system

“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

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