The Coldest Warrior Read online

  Overhead light illuminated the kitchen table where Claire sat, her forehead resting on folded hands, holding house keys with her doctor’s photo ID, asleep. A wrought-iron pot rack hung above the table, dominating the center of the room. Glass cupboards were neatly organized with stemware, and everywhere order and cleanliness were gifts to the eye. Grace, sophistication, good taste. These were the design qualities that Gabriel and Claire had hoped to bring to the home they planned for their retirement after years of nomadic postings. Precious objets d’art filled the house—carved masks, naïve watercolors, embroidered cloth bought in Saigon’s back alleys, an antique medicine chest, and colored-glass vases from Venice.

  “Claire,” he whispered.

  She startled at his touch. Her red eyes greeted him fiercely, but she said nothing.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” She raised her shoulder to move from the awkward position she’d been in. She took a moment to stretch her arms over her head, and as she did, she looked at him, judging him. She reached for a newspaper at the end of the table and handed him the days-old front page of the Times. She pointed to his photograph beside Maggie Wilson in the Senate hearing room, his hand raised against the camera’s unmasking lens, identifying him as an Agency employee.

  Soviet embassy KGB staff knew who he worked for and what he did for a living. Senior congressional staff knew, as did White House aides, and Claire knew. Their close circle of friends mostly knew because over the years they found themselves making friends inside the intelligence community—men and women with whom they could be socially open without having to measure their conversations against a litmus test of what could be said and what could not. Only their fourteen-year-old daughter did not know.

  “Oh, God,” he said.

  Claire looked at her husband. She was calm, angry, judgmental, irritated, quiet. The full scope of her emotional range was present on her face.

  “Where is she?”

  “Asleep.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “What could I say? The caption is wrong? I wasn’t going to lie.”

  Gabriel expected her to criticize him for the avoidable offense, but they’d joined in a conspiracy to keep their rebellious daughter ignorant.

  “We waited too long,” she said. “She’s curious about the world, and she wanted to catch up on the week’s news.” Claire had a desolate expression. “She was appalled. She asked how we could have kept her in the dark.”

  Claire crossed her arms and leaned forward. “She knew something was wrong. She thought we were living in a witness protection program.” Her eyes widened. “She was afraid to ask! She didn’t want to know the answer to that question, so in a way, she was relieved.”

  Gabriel poured himself a scotch from the bottle Claire had opened.

  “She asked if you torture people.”

  Gabriel grimaced.

  “That’s what she’ll ask you in the morning. You need to find a way to reach her. You need to figure out what you’re going to say.”

  Gabriel closed his eyes. Fuck. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. He would have to explain doubly—what he did and why he hadn’t told her. He crossed the kitchen toward the staircase.

  “She’s asleep.”

  “I need a moment.” To think. “I won’t wake her.”

  Gabriel knew the popular myth that wives and children were ignorant of who a CIA officer worked for, but the facts were different. Claire knew without knowing the details of his work, but she also had a career with urgent demands, and she had her own life. She played along when an awkward question arose at a dinner party or an abrupt trip needed to be explained. They had talked frequently about the conversation they needed to have with their daughter, but each time they put it off, hoping that a better moment would come. They differed on the urgency of having the conversation, and they argued in coffee shops or late at night in bed. They argued bitterly. Gabriel feared that his admission would fracture his relationship with his only child and she would reject the life he’d chosen. She was an eager reader of Jane Eyre and Keats’s poems, but she was also among the vocal few in junior high school whose backpacks carried peace signs, who volunteered in soup kitchens, and who talked compassionately about Third World poverty. She believed that the CIA, and the men who worked there, engaged in unscrupulous foul play. She had watched the director’s weeklong, televised congressional testimony, and she’d been appalled by his accounts of assassinations and drug experiments. Dinner conversation stopped when she raised the topic of the hearings and gave her opinion: “The CIA kills people.”

  GABRIEL ENTERED HIS daughter’s dark bedroom. He sat on the rocking chair beside her bed. She lay on her side, knees pulled to her chest, and she’d kicked the comforter to the floor, where it had become a bed for her rescue dog, Molly. Sara had a peaceful expression, but her breathing was shallow and came fitfully. Gabriel gazed at her face and felt a terrible burden. He looked at his child, now almost a young woman, and remembered her birth. He’d felt a love for that baby he never thought he could feel for another human being, and now here she was, a fourteen-year-old with a mind of her own. Where had the years gone?

  Her young mind had struggled to understand the world beyond the family, first in Saigon, and then in the raging American youth counterculture. The change, when it came, was startling. Her skirts shortened, her hair lengthened, and large silver bracelets appeared on her wrists. A new rebelliousness set in. Strong opinions about events in the news erupted, and loud rock music played on her turntable. She was indignant at the adult world’s prejudices. Her idealism startled him, and they argued frequently, but nothing he said helped her understand the compromises that life required. Her commitment to eradicating poverty and to social justice made Gabriel conscious of his own lost compassion. Like her, he had once believed the world could be made a better place. The force of her naiveté challenged him. He made an effort to listen to her concerns without dismissing them, but her loud, indignant judgments tested his patience.

  Gabriel had planned on being gone from the Agency before he had to reveal that he worked for the CIA and not the State Department. He rose from the rocking chair and petted Molly, who rose with him. He leaned over and kissed his daughter’s forehead.

  CLAIRE WAS IN bed, eyes closed, when Gabriel entered their room. He slipped under the sheet beside her and lay looking up at the ceiling. What was next? His mind unspooled options. The silence was broken by a dog’s violent barking far away. Closer by, a couple on the sidewalk laughed excitedly, caught in the sudden rain.

  Christ. The profanity was a feeble echo of his torment. Claire’s breathing was loud in the quiet bedroom. Was she asleep?

  They were aligned in their need to protect their daughter. Sometimes he thought it was the only thing that kept them together. Their marriage had suffered terribly on their return to Washington. The house in Georgetown was supposed to be a calm refuge after years of overseas postings, but their hopes were frustrated by the crush of work, lost weekends, sudden out-of-town trips, and fraught conversations when he called from the office to say he wouldn’t be home until midnight. Claire’s tolerance had stretched thin, and they’d drifted apart, strangers sharing a bed. He couldn’t talk about his work, which widened the gulf, and the distance filled with resentments and suspicions.

  Claire rose on her elbow and looked down at her husband. “Is there a girlfriend?”

  Gabriel wanted to laugh. “There is no girlfriend.”

  “What am I to think?” she demanded. “You’re gone evenings. You live inside yourself, consumed by God knows what. I suffer my love for you. I love you against my will. Foul love.”

  Gabriel sat up. There was a beat of silence. “I won’t be leaving the Agency at the end of the month.”

  Claire recoiled in panic. “No,” she said in a convulsive gasp. Her voice was low and whispery, hardly audible against the torrent of soaking rain. “Why?”

  Gabriel was clos
e enough to feel her dismay. “They want me to find out what happened to Charlie Wilson.”

  “‘They’? You mean him. You can say no.”

  “It won’t take long.” He paused. “I doubt we’ll find anything.”

  She stared. “We agreed you’d leave. It was settled. You have a job waiting.”

  Gabriel resisted the urge to defend himself against the indefensible. He knew that whatever he said would provoke a reaction and they’d exhaust themselves with angry accusations. Her eyes were alarmed but not cold, hurt but not unforgiving.

  “He was a friend. He saved my life. I owe it to him. I owe it to Maggie.”

  “What do you owe me?” Claire snapped. Her voice had the keen edge of a knife. “What do you owe your family?” She glared. “It’s always been this way. I can’t live like this anymore.”

  Gabriel had heard that threat once before. They had been on a floating restaurant on the Mekong River on a warm January during the weeklong New Year’s festivities. Riverboats with glowing paper lanterns floated by, and the war was still far from the city. She had said it desperately, to provoke him and get his attention. There followed an hour-long outpouring of emotion with tears and desperate crying, and it settled itself, as their arguments often did, by summoning the healing memories of their first night together. It had been a blind date in Washington during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They had sparred through the main course at Harvey’s, feeling awkward in the Republican stronghold, each thinking the meeting was a favor to a mutual friend and that the evening couldn’t possibly turn out to be fun. They had tested each other like adversaries, thrusting and parrying clever remarks to gain advantage. From their skirmish of wits grew a skeptical romantic interest, but by the end of the evening they had managed to annoy each other.

  Only the looming nuclear holocaust drew them together. An after-hours jazz bar followed dessert, and after two rounds of Cointreau, they walked into the night and kept walking and talking until they arrived at his bachelor’s apartment. Neither of them wanted to be alone when the ICBMs were launched. They made quiet frenzied love in his bedroom’s darkness with the urgency of lovers who had one night to live. Then they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  Memories of their early romance sustained their marriage across long, difficult periods. Both saw the danger when their individual lives flourished during his extended absences from home.

  “WE ARE BETTER than this,” he said. “I’m not giving up on this marriage.” Gabriel looked deeply into Claire’s skeptical eyes, and husband and wife gazed at each other for a long moment. “Two months. Maybe three. A few conversations and I will write up a report. I owe it to him. Then we’ll move on with our lives. I promise.” Gabriel saw that his words swayed Claire little by little, and he saw an old affection weaken her resolve.

  Her anger cooled and she took his hand. “You are vain, narcissistic, and hurtful. But we are better than this.” She gently placed his hand on her chest. She had gone to bed naked. She kissed his lips.

  Gabriel was surprised by her invitation and hesitated, but she didn’t relent.

  “You are a terrible husband,” she whispered. She looked into his eyes. “How did we get here?”

  He returned her kiss. Their breath came short and quick, and excitement vibrated between them. His hand went to her stomach, and they touched each other in familiar ways. Desire tangled their bodies in intimate contortions. Claire lay on her back, drawing him between her legs, and her hand shot out to grab lubricating gel from the drawer of the bedside table.

  Later, they lay on their backs. Slow, labored breaths followed their exertion, and sweat moistened their bodies. Each gazed up at the shadows of branches dancing on the ceiling. Rain and wind outside quelled their surprise.

  “We got an anonymous caller tonight,” she said. “He made threats against you and hung up. It scared Sara.”

  Gabriel sat up suddenly, looking at Claire.

  “You’ve been identified. He knows you work for the CIA.” She sat up beside him and looked at her hands. “This will come out better for you, for us, for Sara, if it’s something you keep away from the family.”

  A long silence opened between them.

  “Let’s think of this as a temporary, but necessary, separation. One of your sudden, extended trips out of town. I can say that to Sara. It’s safer that way. I’ll delist our number. Stay here if you want, but staying in a hotel will be safer.”

  Gabriel saw the distant look on Claire’s face. Is it over? Is this how a marriage ends—suddenly? Unexpectedly? An afterthought after sex? Gabriel felt like a stranger in his own bed. Loss presented itself as a terrible, unfamiliar color. Her suggestion was a hostile declaration, but in her calm, he felt denied the opportunity to open a discussion.

  “Someone saw my photo in the paper. They used my name to find our number. I’ll have the house protected. I am not going to a hotel.”

  THE NEXT MORNING. Bright sunlight streamed through the kitchen’s bay window, which looked onto a manicured garden in the town house’s small backyard. Wind had cleared out the evening storm, and a flock of birds sounded a chirping chorus.

  Gabriel entered the kitchen in pajamas and, as he did each morning, filled the kettle and measured grounds into the paper filter of the coffeemaker. He was a prisoner of a sullen routine, unaware that his daughter was at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal. He had turned from the stove, where he’d ignited the gas, when he saw her.

  Their eyes met. Molly, an adult Malamute with lush fur, was at her side. He extended his hand to pet Molly’s head when she rose to greet him. Sara had wanted a record player, and he’d bought her a Marantz stereo system. She’d wanted a puppy, and he’d helped her adopt a Malamute mix. Gabriel encouraged her to pick a big dog because she was frequently home alone. A big dog, even a gentle big dog, had the power to intimidate strangers.

  He felt his daughter’s hostility. “Good morning,” he said.

  Sara had always been a complicated subject for him. She was lovely and earnest in one moment and then—changing in an instant for an unknown reason—cold and unforgiving in her haste to abandon a conversation that no longer interested her.

  “You work for the CIA,” she said.

  Nothing in life had prepared Gabriel for the challenge of fatherhood—love and anger knotted together. He sat across from her. She continued to stare at her cereal, avoiding his eyes, and silence lingered. He didn’t have the patience to find the right words for a response, and he let his urge to scold her accusatory tone pass. He didn’t have it in him to do what he knew he must—to apologize without being apologetic; to defend himself without being defensive; to earn her understanding without having to be understood. Nothing challenged him like his daughter’s contempt.

  He rose again and turned off the gas under the whistling kettle. He poured two cups of coffee. He added half-and-half to hers, sugar to his. The two sat opposite each other across a great gulf.

  Each spoke at the same time, words colliding, and then stopped speaking. Whatever thoughts had been on the verge of being voiced vanished. Sara grimaced at the moment’s awkwardness.

  “Will you be around for a while?” she asked.

  “I live here.”

  “No trips coming up?”

  “I’ll be around. I’m working in the office for a few weeks.”

  “No coup d’etats to engineer? No governments to topple?”

  Gabriel frowned.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sure you’re doing good things. Protecting us from free speech.”

  Gabriel contained his anger. He stared at her, and she stared back.

  “I’ve suspected for a while,” she said.

  “When?”

  “Saigon. There was another American girl who didn’t like me. I ignored her, and it made her think I felt superior. You know how someone doesn’t like you and you don’t know why. She came up to me at the embassy pool one morning and asked if I knew that you worked for the CIA. She
called you a spook. She wanted to embarrass me. I insisted you worked for the State Department—the lie you’d told me.”

  Sara looked away from her father toward the chirping birds, but after a moment her eyes settled on him again. “I didn’t believe her. I didn’t want to believe her.” She nodded at the living room’s tall parlor windows, which faced P Street. “Do the men in the car parked outside also work for the CIA?”

  Gabriel left the kitchen and pulled aside one corner of the drawn drapes. In the narrow arc of window, he saw a neighbor’s parked Volkswagen, and behind it he recognized another neighbor’s Mercedes-Benz. A Ford sedan also caught his attention. On a street where residents preferred imported cars, the plain black Ford stood out. When the man in the passenger seat glanced in Gabriel’s direction, Gabriel stepped back out of view and continued to watch the car.

  “Who are they?” Sara asked. She had leashed Molly and was preparing to walk the dog.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’re not police,” she said. “Police drink coffee and eat donuts.” She arched an eyebrow. “FBI.”

  “Really,” he said.

  “We were told how to spot them at anti-war marches.”

  Gabriel appreciated the confidence of her boast.

  “I’m walking Molly,” she said.

  “I’ll change and join you.”

  Molly pulled Sara down the quiet residential street, a proud dog with a wolf’s menacing snout, straining on her leash. Father and daughter followed behind the lunging animal, and they found themselves in a fragile peace. Molly’s interest in neighborhood dogs’ scents was a pleasant distraction.

  Coming to the end of the block, Gabriel happened to look back. The intuition he’d acquired in the divided city of Berlin, which he’d later put to good use in Saigon’s narrow streets, the feeling of knowing he was being watched. There behind them, the man in the Ford’s passenger seat had his head out the window. He wore a snap-brim hat, garroting tie, and dark glasses. He made no effort to hide his presence and spoke into a walkie-talkie.