…I based my fictitious fiancé on a plastic surgeon I had met through family friends. Maybe it was the distraction created by my huge pulsating zit, but Oliver and Allen seemed to buy my story of pending nuptials to this doctor. This did not deter them from telling me some interesting stories about Archie…

…He yanked my bag out of the trunk and placed it on the ground, grumbling, “Have a nice life.” With that, he turned, got back in the car, and drove off.
I teared up immediately. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach and stabbed in the heart. Trying to keep myself together, I grabbed my bag and rolled it into the airport to find which gate I needed to get to. The airport was somewhat confusing, and I was about to have a full-fledged break down in front of hundreds of strangers…

…I began to see Jarod for what he was, a lonely guy who lied for a living…

…Archie seemed to be in a bit of an existential crisis; when I would visit him he would insist that I join him at church, and attempt to teach me about Catholicism, but that same afternoon he would want to take me to a strip club and see if I could pick up a girl. We had a very uncomfortable visit to a strip club in DC; one visit was all I needed to see that Archie really could not handle friendly, naked women approaching us, as often happens at strip clubs…

…I thought Bloud would serve as a sympathetic ear. Bloud painted a somewhat pathetic picture of himself, explaining that without his career he would have nothing. He was nearing the mandatory retirement age, and he did not know what to do with himself once he was forced to retire. He described a haunting image he had of himself as a janitor somewhere, sweeping the floor, living out his retirement. He seemed like a sad and lost soul. That evening, when we both left to go our separate ways, we agreed that anything we talked about was just between the two of us…

…A new officer had joined our group. Bloud was an experienced             officer, in his fifties, who I had heard much about. Apparently he had done some pretty exciting things years ago and he loved talking about his experiences, holding a captive audience in the young officers surrounding him. He delighted in telling tales of encounters with tigers and serving time in a hole in the ground somewhere in the Middle East. It was hard to imagine this slovenly, obese man doing anything besides eating pork rinds and drinking beer, but the stories were entertaining…

…One of the main issues he had was that he had acquired some very sensitive technical equipment from one of his contacts            . This equipment was highly sought-after in the intelligence community. He needed a way to bring this equipment out of the country without getting arrested. If the intelligence service of the country discovered this equipment, he would be in extreme danger.
Jarod had an idea of how to get the equipment out, and he ran it by me. We decided the best thing to do was write this plan up in a cable and submit it to Headquarters for approval on his next trip            . He accompanied this cable with some administrative-type cables that I knew Headquarters would insist on having in order to even consider this plan. They were all box-checking types of cables, but he needed them regardless. We both knew that Headquarters was fairly risk-averse, and they would never want to suggest the plan themselves, for fear that if it failed they would look bad, and someone would not get their promotion to 15, or SIS. Jarod wanted to take the risk. He knew that having the equipment in his house in-country was more dangerous. If the intelligence service of that country decided to focus on him because he was a foreigner living there, they would not be opposed to appearing at his residence and searching his belongings. Jarod was in constant fear of hearing that knock on the door, and he was a rare employee of the Agency in that he wanted to get things done, not sit around and talk about them…

…Even Carina, Annie’s friend, had been granted LWOP! She had been allowed to go on LWOP after a disastrous TDY to Guantanamo Bay where she had a relationship with a detainee. She had reportedly made quite a scene during this TDY trying to convince her co-workers that this detainee was innocent of the terrorist acts he was accused of. The extent of her inappropriate behavior was discovered when a note she passed to the detainee was confiscated. The note was signed “your sweetie.” As usual, her behavior was not documented, and a year later, after she returned from LWOP, all had been forgotten. In fact, she worked in Barry’s division; I knew this because he delighted in telling me stories about her frequent visits to his office to chat about boys…

…I arrived in             to find a very disorganized office. Some of the people in the very large group forced in to these assignments did not even have desks to sit at yet. It was as if no one had planned for this surge of new people who were apparently so urgently needed. I was placed at a desk, but found I had no work to do…

…I had absolutely no CI experience, so I was baffled at how I could be chosen for this somewhat crucial aspect of work in this new division…

…Not that my appearance went unnoticed. During one particularly large delegation visit dinner, the Chief of a very large and prominent division spent the entire evening talking with me and not even acknowledging our foreign guests. He shamelessly insisted I sit next to him, ordered my dinner for me, offered to share his dessert with me and made sure he poured my wine himself when my glass became empty. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought we were on a date. Fortunately our foreign guests were not offended and actually found his behavior rather amusing. I cannot say that the Agency participants were amused though, as I noticed the horrified looks on many of their faces during this high level SIS’s antics…