August 1988
Jonna
Tony and I were standing so close to one another that light could barely pass between us. He was quietly telling me something important about the upcoming flight to Los Angeles, but I couldn’t focus on the words. I was almost dizzy with his nearness; the sensation was like being somewhat tipsy and knowing you are about to get into trouble, only you can’t turn back.
When they called our flight, we walked through the United Airlines departure lounge at Dulles and filed down the walkway that tethered the plane to the gate. Our first stop on this trip would be L.A., before I headed on to Hong Kong, then China. Tony and I would be meeting in California with several specialized contractors he had worked with for years, looking for new answers to our current problems in Moscow.
I took my seat in business class and looked back to see how far away he was sitting. I spotted him quickly, looking for the Harris Tweed coat and the black-and-gray-striped shirt before I looked for his face—an old habit from surveillance exercises. Only three rows back. Good, I can keep track of him without being too obvious.
I was sitting up front in business class because this was the first leg of an international trip and the office would pay for business class either if the trip was long enough or if you were going to work right after getting to your destination. As I was to end up halfway around the world, that put me solidly in the “long enough” part of the travel regulation. I would be visiting Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai—a trip I had wanted to take almost my entire working career. It would be a two-week survey, a relatively easy visit, to see what each city and region looked like, to observe the people, and to survey the operational lay of the land. I would be visiting with our operations officers along the way, but a lot of the time I would be out on my own. This was a type of work that I particularly enjoyed. I knew that some professional women didn’t like traveling alone, but I did. It was almost like running—I got a lot of mental work done when I could tune out the rest of the world. Besides doing the survey, I would also be trying to solve some other problems, both professional and personal.
Foremost among those in the latter category was what to do about my marriage. At this point, I felt as if the marriage was just a shell—picture perfect on the outside but empty within. While John and I could and did talk about our work, we actually discussed little else. Our passions lay elsewhere, outside of our marriage. Sports, in fact, were at the top of his list, and books were at the top of mine. It wasn’t that I was miserable. In fact, I was so comfortable in my big Victorian home in Reston, Virginia, and so pleased with my garden that there was no impetus for me to take the final step and make a break. We had just completed a real library at the front of the house, a place full of glass-fronted bookcases that could hold all of the old classics and modern first editions that I had collected for years. The rugs were down on the dark-stained hardwood floors; the antiques I had collected in Europe and the Far East were finally in place. Life was pleasant, and John and I had been coasting in this way for years. On the other hand, if my feelings for Tony continued like this, I was looking at a real dilemma. That was exactly the kind of situation I had many times watched from the sidelines, and marveled at how people made such stupid mistakes in their personal affairs and ruined their lives and careers.
I turned to look at him. He was immersed in his reading—a biography of Winston Churchill called The Last Lion that he had been telling me about for weeks.
Turning back to my newspaper, I tried to shake off the butterflies in my stomach. What in the world was happening? This is my boss and I am getting giddy when he gets close? Sounded like a problem I had heard about from a few friends over the years, but surely not one I would encounter. I picked up The Washington Post and dived into the Style section. I was about halfway through the last piece when I sensed someone standing by my seat.
He was kneeling down on one knee in the aisle beside me.
“I got a book for you last night,” Tony said. “I was at Olsson’s bookstore down by the Metro downtown. I think you should read this.”
I took the thin volume from him and turned it over. The Art of War.
“Why?” I asked, a bit mystified.
“It was written by a Chinese general named Sun Tzu nearly twenty-five hundred years ago. It’s the most brilliant philosophy on espionage, strategy, tactics, and warfare that I’ve read.”
He looked at me with a slight smile, eyebrows raised. “We are at war, you know. We’re the generals who are developing the strategy for a counterattack. Why don’t you look it over and see what you think.”
Tony rose and returned to his seat.
I sat there, perfectly still, my heart beating too fast. I felt a blush sweep up my neck and envelop my face. I flashed to all of the stories of those who had beat the polygraph machines by failing to register their true emotions when tested. I summoned up a picture-perfect image of the terrace at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, with a soft wind and endless sun streaming through the palms. It worked. I could breathe again.
I picked up the book and began to read:
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
I was still reading as we began our descent into LAX. The flight had been uneventful, the food the usual mystery buried under a cream sauce, and the dessert inedible. And I was aware of his presence with every turned page.
“The first order of business,” Tony proclaimed as we deplaned, “as important as all of the rest, is to have a good time while we’re out here. It’s going to get very intense, and in the moments in between, you have to be sure to enjoy the place.”
I liked this man’s style.
Los Angeles
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel was something special. Built in 1927, it was a true luxury hotel in the heart of Tinseltown, designed in the popular 1920s Spanish-Moorish style, complete with tile roofs and elaborately carved beamed ceilings in all of the public rooms. The lobby was a grand space with iron chandeliers, arched windows, and marble floors. Just about the best part of the hotel was the pool area, which I could see once we walked down the corridor and exited the back side of the facility. It was lushly planted with tropical blooming plants and had a large pool and an enticing hot tub at the far end. I filed away this information; the hot tub would be a great place to seek out after a long day of meetings.
We dropped our bags in our rooms—cabana rooms, they each faced the pool. I noticed that Tony’s room was almost directly across from mine. We freshened up and met again in the bar at five o’clock.
“We’re meeting Jerome Calloway for drinks at six and going to the Magic Castle for dinner,” Tony said.
I knew Jerome was an award-winning makeup artist whom Tony had worked with before on some operational problems. Hollywood had provided expertise in materials and techniques on several previous CIA operations.
“The Castle is a real treat,” Tony continued. “It’s a private club by and for magicians, and friends of magicians. They perform for each other in a small intimate setting. You’ll never get closer to a card trick or a stage show.”
The Castle was within walking distance of the hotel. As we exited onto Hollywood Boulevard, I realized that we were on the famous Walk of Fame. The pink granite stars in the sidewalk were engraved with the names of famous entertainers.
We crossed the street to see Mann’s Chinese Theater.
“Look, there,” Tony pointed, slowing down. “That’s Jerome’s star—almost right smack in front of the theater entrance.”
We walked one block over and two blocks down. From the exterior, the Magic Castle did not disappoint. We approached it from Hollywood Boulevard, heading up a steep incline. Perched high above us was a large Victorian building with the appropriate turrets and gingerbread. It was painted a creamy, buttery yellow, and closely resembled something from the set of The Addams Family. At the top of the turret in front, on the third floor, was a window displaying a skeleton in a rocking chair busily moving back and forth and peering out onto the parking lot.
We were met at the entrance by an older man in a tuxedo, the maitre d’, who looked at me with a slight frown. “Excuse me, madam, but our dress code requires evening dress for women. Do you perhaps have a jacket that goes with those trousers? If you have a jacket, we could call it a suit and I could admit you.”
He looked me up and down again—a little arrogantly, I thought.
I felt the blush sweeping over me, my second one in less than twenty-four hours. I was surprised, then embarrassed, and finally angry at the situation.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was a dress occasion.”
My bags were full of the casual working clothes I planned for China, but I was turned out in silk pants and a hand-knit silk sweater with pearls and low-heeled Bruno Magli sandals. Evidently my ensemble did not quite measure up.
Jerome Calloway, who had joined us, was clearly mortified and began spluttering an apology to me. Tony turned to him and easily and gracefully defused the situation.
“That’s okay, Jerome. Jonna and I will just get a quick bite to eat and head back to the hotel. We’re both tired from the flight. We’ll meet you at nine in the morning.”
Jerome readily agreed to this new plan, throwing a final glaring look at the doorman. Jerome was feeling personally slighted; he was a man of some stature in this town and not used to being denied his way. Besides, this was the equivalent of his private club. The doorman held his ground, though; he had enforced the rules and his authority had prevailed. I thought that he would make a good Indian of the kind that you find at the airport in New Delhi. The British had taught them all about enforcing the rules, and it was now a large cottage industry there.
Tony and I departed.
“Thanks,” I murmured. “Nice save. Now, where shall we go? Do you know your way around this town?”
We drove down Hollywood Boulevard in our rental car, heading east. We took the ramp to the 101 South to cross Los Angeles. We left Hollywood behind, shooting across the city, and emerged on the east side; some would say the real Los Angeles. It was clear that Tony was intimately familiar with the city and its freeways.
“We’ll go over to Olvera Street, if that’s okay with you,” he said.
“Olvera is on this side of town, the wrong side, surrounded by darker and quieter streets than those we have been seeing so far. It looks a little menacing, but the place I’m taking you to is perfectly safe. I haven’t been there in a long time, but I think you’ll like it.”
We exited from the freeway, and the streets did have a different character. They were not the well-lit, bustling thoroughfares of Hollywood and Beverly Hills but more subdued, with closed storefronts and darkened windows facing the street.
I thought it was a little ominous. “This is how Bonfire of the Vanities begins, I ventured.”
Tony said he hadn’t yet read it.
“They exit a highway in New York City and get so scared that they run over a couple of young men who are trying to help them,” I explained. “Be careful and don’t run anybody down. Tom Wolfe isn’t here to write us out of it.”
I smiled at him to show that I was only kidding, and got a nod and a beaming smile in return. We were driving by cars sitting on blocks and boarded-up apartment buildings. Then, a couple of blocks ahead, there was a shimmer of thousands of small lights in the trees.
“That’s it,” Tony said, pulling the car into a nearby parking lot.
We walked across the deserted street and entered a walkway that was out of a fairy tale. Olvera Street is constructed like a Mexican village, with all of the restaurants, street stalls, and shops you would expect to encounter south of the border. We passed a group of local musicians on their break and wandered down one side of the street, examining all sorts of Mexican products for sale in the stalls.
“Just a little farther,” Tony said, “on the left-hand side.”
We stopped outside La Golondrina (“The Swallow”), and he motioned me in. The restaurant was dark with a lot of glistening, highly polished wooden surfaces, and ceiling fans stirred the air from above. We took a table in front of the fireplace, where we had a splendid view of the entire room and there was a fire going just a few feet from us in the chilly evening.
“What color would you call these walls?” I asked. “Sienna?”
“Well, let’s see. Not raw sienna or burnt sienna or red sienna,” replied my boss, an artist. “The color is really called Indian Red. Can you guess why?” He paused a beat. “Because it is the exact color of the makeup used to make Cherokee and Cheyenne Indians in the movies.”
I didn’t believe him and thought he was just trying to be amusing. But he finally convinced me that he was telling the truth. His oil paints, he explained, came in large tubes, and the one containing this hue was labeled “Indian Red.”
“How in the world did you find this place?” I asked.
“I didn’t. My mom and dad found it. They came here from Eureka, Nevada, on their honeymoon in 1937. They were eighteen years old and newlyweds. Kids really. My dad died working in a copper mine in 1943, when I was three. I was too young to remember him, but I’ve seen his photos and he was a great-looking guy. He played guitar and often joined in one of these kinds of bands on the weekend. In fact, they were a great-looking couple. My mom always talked about their trip to Olvera Street while we were growing up. She had six young kids back then, and she used to tell us a lot of romantic stories about the two of them. She said this place was just like vacationing in Mexico.”
Tony had a sad smile at the thought of his mother here as a young woman.
I looked around. Although it was summertime, the Christmas decorations were still up and the lights still on. They probably never take them down, I thought, just like in the bars in the Philippines. Through the open door and the wide windows we watched a steady stream of families and kids strolling past, many on their way to dinner.
A young gringo waitress appeared out of nowhere to take our drink orders. Tony ordered a Dos Equis amber, and I succumbed to their house special, a huge margarita. While we were waiting for them, Tony gave me a thumbnail sketch of his L.A. connections, most of which involved a lot of travel from Washington consulting with Hollywood. He told me about his grandmother, Lucia Serrata Gomez, who was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave somewhere in the city. He wanted to come back someday and find her—he had inherited a lot of family lore from his mother and was very interested in her family history. He said that she had been a beautiful woman. Many months later I saw a photograph of her: a sad, attractive young girl with a gardenia behind one ear. She was a world-class beauty.
We were approached by two guitarists, dressed to the nines in the kind of mariachi outfits that made my teeth ache. I grimaced to Tony, hoping he would wave them off. To my horror, he motioned them over. They knew a live one when they saw him. They happily launched into a song that charmed us both—a song neither of us had heard before. It was soft and melodic and a little melancholy and in Spanish, which meant I didn’t understand a word.
When they finished, we applauded them and asked their names.
“Raul and Moises,” they said, bowing.
“What was the name of that song?” I asked. “It was really lovely.”
“The song is called ‘Sabor a Mi,’ ” replied Raul, who so resembled Jabba the Hutt that it had seriously detracted from the music.
I had listened to them sing while watching Tony, wondering if he understood Spanish. He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders, and raised his hands palms up in the universal I-haven’t-got-a-clue gesture.
Raul leaned down to the table. “It means, ‘A Taste of Me,’ ” he whispered.
I looked at him, rather blankly, I expect.
“Like in a kiss,” he said, gently smiling at our apparent lack of romance.
Tony handed them some money, and they moved off across the restaurant.
We remained silent for several minutes, each lost in our thoughts.
“This was the first Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles,” Tony finally said. “It dates back to 1924.”
I could see he was reading from the back of the menu. No doubt he was trying to lighten the suddenly awkward mood, but it was tough going.
The evening deteriorated from there. On the way home we both tried to make light conversation, but it didn’t work. Finally, I asked what had been on my mind all evening: “Did you and Karen come here often?”
I had begun to feel that Tony was still so vulnerable after his wife’s death that his actions and words had to be taken with that in mind. I was afraid that he might be trying to replace her, and no woman wanted to be someone else’s stand-in.
“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked, irritated.
“I was trying to show you a place that is special to me—a place that I thought you would love—and all you can do is question my motives?”
He drove on in silence, going faster. We got back onto the freeway and picked up speed, hurtling back across the city in a mass of traffic.
When we got back to the hotel, we both went directly to our rooms, avoiding the bar, where we would normally have had a drink before retiring. I found myself unable to sleep and sat on a small sofa in my darkened room with the drapes open, looking out on the pool that had looked so tantalizing earlier in the day. I could see that the lights were on in his room, but the drapes were drawn.
Why did he have to get so angry? I was uncomfortable with the feelings that Tony was arousing in me and did not trust my own judgment at this point. He was putting me in a difficult position. On the one hand, I admired him as I had admired few men. He was the complete package: intelligent, balanced, clever, and funny. He was a romantic at heart, an adventurer, and an artist who thought with the right side of his brain, the creative side, as well as a skilled negotiator. He was kind and warm and real.
Both of our marriages had ended; his suddenly and tragically, mine sadly and incompletely. There would be no rush on my part to jump into another relationship, and no need to do so with Tony, especially since it might spoil our professional partnership and wonderful friendship.
Maybe what bothered me most was the thought of jeopardizing our friendship; the chance that it might end abruptly. Already, I couldn’t imagine not having Tony in my life.
I finally fell asleep, fully clothed, sitting on the sofa.
I was awakened the next morning by the glare of California sunshine shooting through the opened blinds.
It had been a long night—so full in the beginning, and so lonely at the end.
We went through the security formalities at the entrance to the studio lot in Burbank, and parked beside a group of stucco buildings surrounded by palm trees that looked faintly reminiscent of Hollywood in the 1930s.
Strolling down the narrow streets of the studio complex, we came to another group of buildings that served as offices for a variety of producers, directors, and administrative types; these buildings were less grand than the earlier ones. We kept going, finally turning a corner and finding a slightly run-down building with an outside staircase.
Tony led me up the stairs and along a balcony into what turned out to be the right office, but with no one in it. “He must be in his laboratory.”
We went down the stairs and across the street to enter a large, hangarlike building with a row of trailers parked in a line outside.
“Wardrobe, catering, and the stars, if they are famous enough, get a trailer of their own,” Tony explained. He had been here many times and was comfortably familiar with the surroundings.
We went down a long, dark corridor, emerging into a two-story room that was obviously a working lab. I saw immediately that it bore an uncanny resemblance to our own labs back at headquarters. It even smelled the same, except here all four walls were lined with rubber faces of characters and monsters from many of the classic movies of our time. I felt like a kid in a candy store.
Jerome Calloway came striding through a doorway and greeted Tony the way he had last night, with a bear hug. He was a large and affable man with thinning gray hair and heavy, black-rimmed glasses. He looked like an aging postman, tanned and fit, but getting a little heavy.
“Sorry about last night,” Calloway said. “We’ll get you in there another night.” Turning to me, he said, “Jonna, do you have any idea what you’re in for today?”
“I think so, Jerome, and I can’t wait to get started. It’s not often that I get to work with a living legend.”
“That has a faintly ominous ring to it.” Calloway smiled at me, the first of many kindly smiles from this good-natured gentleman as he guided us through his processes.
After Jerome’s tour, Tony wanted to get down to work.
“Jerome, here’s our problem,” he said. “As always, we’re going to ask you to treat this information as privileged.”
“Of course.”
“We need your expertise for some special effects we want to perform. The goal is to have two individuals disappear in a crowded room without a trace—into thin air. We’ve all seen it done by magicians and on the big screen; maybe you can show us how to create that same effect without the benefit of lights, retakes, and hours of makeup.”
“You know my methods pretty well by now,” Calloway said.
“Whether I do the work or you do it, it goes back to the same principles. You have to know where the stage is—that is, where your actors will be performing. And it is a performance—you can’t treat it as anything less. You have to know exactly who your audience is, and then pick the right time. You’ve picked the stage. Oh, this is very important: the illusion is usually over with before the performance begins. Let’s sit down and define these areas; then we can make a start. First, how tall are they and how much do they weigh?”
“Individually or together?” I asked, smiling.
Jerome cracked up. “We’ll treat each one as a single unit, if you please.”
That evening after dinner, Tony and I found ourselves sitting on the terrace by the pool at the hotel. A glass of champagne in my hand, I leaned back in the chaise lounge and said, “What an amazing day. I can’t believe what we are talking about.”
Tony smiled at me. He raised the glass in a toast, then took a sip and set it down. “It is pretty interesting stuff. And wait until tomorrow—the ‘Wizards’ are going to throw technology into the mix. Right now, though, I just want to relax.”
“Good idea. Look over there, across the pool. They have a hot tub. I think I’m going to put on my suit and slip in. I’ve been thinking about it since we checked in.”
I stood and headed for my room.
“I’ll race you,” said Tony.
Ten minutes later, we were sitting in the tub up to our necks in bubbles and steaming mist. We sat close together in the cool evening air, enjoying the jet stream coming over the ledge, and were silent for a long time.
“This is heaven,” I said.
“Pretty close to it.”
Tony looked steadily at me.
I looked back. I wonder who invented this man? Who cobbled him together? He’s the most interesting man I have ever met. He needs to be kissed, he is so lonely.
I leaned over, put my hand on his shoulder, and kissed him lightly on the lips.
There was a moment of recognition by us both.
“That’s not a kiss,” he said, putting his glass down on the side of the tub. He pulled me toward him, through the steam and bubbles. “This is a kiss.”
The meeting with the Wizards started at nine-thirty sharp the next morning.
Assembled in a conference room at a private facility were a group of scientists and theorists who represented the state of the art in their fields. Chemists, engineers, computer gurus, research heads, all brought together under one roof. Tony had called this high-powered brainstorming session to help solve some of our problems in Moscow.
Ted Giles, a former Navy submarine commander, chaired the meeting. Retired from the U.S. Navy and now working in private industry, Giles was one of those bald men who look totally cool without hair. He had broad shoulders and the command presence one would expect from a man with his military background. On the other hand, he was a little hard to handle. The submarine commander in him liked to take charge of the subject, any subject, and run with it. He had been with a think tank on the East Coast for several years and now headed a research-and-development element of a large corporation. Tony and I had worked with Giles for a number of years, and we admired his ability to bring focus to a project and to execute it with precision.
Months earlier, Giles had been in my office at headquarters going over a program that I had him undertaking for Disguise Branch. When I had insisted that he give the men in his research area their head and let them do some blue-sky research on our project, he had balked. I remembered how Tony had brought him around, talking him down off his imaginary podium. “Ted,” he had said, “turn it off. I’m transmitting, you’re receiving.” Giles had gone mute, finally hearing what we’d been trying to tell him.
“Gentlemen,” Giles said now to the roomful of specialists, “thank you for coming. We all know the rules, but I will review them just to ensure that everything is crystal clear. One, anything said in this room today does not leave this room. Two, the only written record of what goes on here will be kept by our client. Three, once we are finished, this meeting never happened. You all know Tony Mendez. He has brought one of his OTS colleagues with him, Jonna Goeser. They have another puzzler for us, and this one has a short fuse. Let’s get to it.”
“Good morning,” Tony said. “Please bear with me while I try to set the stage for this problem. Somewhere in the world near one of our cover installations, there is a doorway that we have never opened. What if one were interested in finally opening that door, but wanted to do so undetected? Once it’s open, what if one found a dark corridor on the other side and wanted to enter that corridor without anyone knowing? What if there are no lights in the space—just a dark, mysterious burrow of unlimited size and shape?”
The room was silent; the scientists leaned forward to hear Tony’s every word.
Tony continued, explaining that he hoped the group would consider what might be in that corridor that could be a threat, and what countermeasures designed to guard the burrow’s contents might the entry team expect to find.
In truth, there was no installation exactly like this. But the scenario was very close to some operational contingencies that Tony thought might be faced in Moscow.
“Let me also add that going into the corridor is not optional,” Tony said. “However, if we go in unprepared, some lives may be at risk. That is unacceptable. We have given it some thought ourselves, but rather than prejudice the experiment, we will reserve our ideas until we see what you come up with. We will share with you some raw data on what our enemies might have been trying to do to keep track of us and why.”
Tony nodded at me with a smile so warm that I was worried that others in the meeting might notice. I felt as if I were floating on air, just like in those cloying songs about young love. Last night had been something that I would characterize as “a significant emotional event.” And I was finding it difficult to focus on the business at hand.
I circulated through the room, handing out numbered copies of a classified document: a ten-page, letter-sized list that contained a lot of the known, or suspected, threats from the KGB that we now faced while operating in Moscow—such as ghost surveillance and spy dust. There was a small sheet attached to each document that had to be signed and handed back to me immediately. Rules again, only this time from the CIA’s Office of Security, and to my liking. I felt Tony’s eyes on me as I moved around the room, and it took some work on my part to stave off the blush.
Giles pulled several large newsprint pads into position, each on its own three-legged easel. Felt-tipped pens were on a side table, and the coffee machine was gurgling, the crew having already finished what would be the first of many pots of coffee.
“You’ll notice that the obvious threats are itemized first, and that the ideas get more exotic as we move down the list,” Tony said. “For instance, the first items up for discussion are called ‘Sensing Devices,’ which are then spelled out in more detail. We can start out with optical systems. The first question, then, is, What is the threat to our officer or agent from optical-sensing systems? Exactly what is the state of the art today?”
Disciplined and thorough, the specialists walked us through the numerous disciplines they represented—physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, computer science, biology, parapsychology. Each expert brought to the table cutting-edge technologies. They all accepted our design goal—to enable a man to enter the burrow undetected and travel a good distance through it—and did not stray from that mission. That so many of their ideas and strategies were eventually put to good use by us and other CIA field operatives attests to the fact that the Wizards did not disappoint that day.
Hours later, at the end of the session, Tony and I had hung back while the rest of the crowd left in small groups and clusters. I was gathering up the paperwork and getting my purse when Giles briefly stepped back into the room. He was pleased with the day’s progress, as were we. We thanked him for all of his help, and he turned to go, then turned back around and looked at us.
“Stay out of mischief, you two,” he said sternly before his face lit up with a beaming smile.
There was no way the ex–submarine skipper could have known that it was too late—that Tony and I were already up to our ears in mischief.
Two days later, I was at LAX again, boarding a United commuter flight for San Francisco, where I was to begin the long trip to China. Tony boarded with me, holding my hand, and we found seats together near the front of the plane.
When Tony had learned I was spending a day in San Francisco without an official tour guide, he had volunteered to escort me there and show me the city. I was beginning to wonder if he knew his way around every major city in America. I would find out later that he could navigate in almost all of the major capitals of the world.
At the car rental counter, I was down for a midsize car, following CIA travel regulations. The fact that we upgraded it to a Chrysler LeBaron convertible would be an out-of-pocket expense for which I would reimburse the U.S. government. Paying strict attention to the rules and following them to the letter had kept my conscience clear and my record straight for many years. Knowing when to enhance the rules creatively came only with experience.
Tony placed our bags in the trunk of the car, lowered the convertible top, and took the keys from my hand. “Destination?” he asked.
“The Hilton Hotel downtown,” I replied.
And off we sailed into the most perfect twenty-four hours of my life.
Checking in at the hotel, we got the giggles as we stood in line at the registration desk in the beautiful sunlit lobby. By the time we stepped up to the desk, we had trouble rearranging our faces into a businesslike demeanor.
The hotel employee did not seem in the mood to join us in our obviously frivolous moment. “And how many will be staying tonight?” he asked.
“Two,” I responded weakly.
“Twin-sized beds or a king?”
“Oh, a king would be fine.” I tensed, trying to maintain a hold on my professional façade, what with a line of other people having formed behind us.
Tony showed superb control as he looked at the floor, composing himself. We could have been a pair of ten-year-olds planning a prank.
“How will you be paying for the room, Mrs. Goeser?”
Well, that certainly sobered me up.
I recognized in that instant that I was in the process of physically leaving my husband, that the brittle shell of the marriage had finally shattered. I knew now that I would leave, and that John and I would finalize something that had been hanging in the air for years. It would be a burden lifted, perhaps for both of us. It would be a relief. In that moment of clarity I wanted to talk to him, to call him and tell him this decision. But of course, better judgment took hold. That conversation could only be held in person, and it would have to wait until I returned from China.
“Visa,” I barely whispered.
Tony and I walked out of the hotel into a perfect day of sunshine and light breezes. Back in the car, we headed for Ghirardelli Square and lunch. As we sat outside at a café, he described the years he had spent in San Francisco. Tony’s mother had once managed a hotel on Lombard Street, and we walked over there to take a look at it. On the way, we bought matching navy blue cable-knit sweaters to combat the early morning chill and silly Dick Tracy baseball hats at a gift shop. We wore our tourist disguises the rest of the afternoon.
We worked our way through Chinatown, then went to Golden Gate Park. We drove out of San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge, then turned around and drove back—all so that we could experience, on the fog-encased bridge, the sensation of flying. We parked the car and walked down to Seal Rock, a coastal rock shelf right on the ocean, where we sat for a good part of the afternoon watching seals frolic in the surf and getting sprayed by foam from the Pacific. We sat quietly, not talking. Tony sat behind me, shielding me from the cool ocean breeze, his arms wrapped around my shoulders. It felt fine.
That evening we were going to eat at a restaurant named Shadows. “It’s a famous place,” Tony said as we got ready. “Our reservations are for seven-thirty—and don’t worry about what to wear. In San Francisco, your silk pants and sweater will do just fine.”
Alas, I will never know what culinary delights I missed.
We never got out the door that night, never got any dinner at all. We were both acutely aware that I was leaving the next day for a long and solitary journey, and we began saying good-bye well in advance of my departure.
The next morning came too early and too bright. What had been delightful sunlight just the day before now felt more like a blowtorch burning through the hotel window, waking us up abruptly.
We had one last stop before the airport—across the bridge and through the fog again, to a restaurant down by the Sausalito marina. I found myself thoroughly charmed with the San Francisco Bay Area, especially as presented by my personal tour guide.
Totally content from breakfast and deliriously happy in each other’s company, we headed for the airport, the ragtop down and the wind in our hair. Tony held on to my left knee all the way to the airport, as though it were part of the gearshift. We didn’t talk much, but we were both thinking a thousand miles an hour. At the airport, I checked my bags at the curb and made a dash for the gate. There was a hurried good-bye and much waving and some kissing—and then we parted.
He was gone, and I was alone again.
Flying into Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport was the same exciting ride it had always been. We came in low and fast, over clotheslines, hopping over billboards, and setting down prematurely, it seemed, until you saw the end of the runway rushing toward you and the South China Sea just beyond. In other words, a normal landing.
My taxi driver made his way through the sea of cars to China Airlines, where all travel into mainland China is arranged through the national airline. The first leg of my journey would be by rail, traveling from Hong Kong to Guangzhou on the train, then by air to Beijing and Shanghai. Once I had attended to all the formalities and had my tickets in hand, I was issued a travel visa. I made mental—and later, actual—notes of all the various procedures for entry into the Communist country. Whenever it was possible, I pocketed extra forms to give to our document operations people in Washington in the event they ever needed to make forgeries.
The train ride was not particularly interesting, but the border formalities were, and a little intimidating at that. There was a lot of security and countless military guards at the border, where each passenger was closely scrutinized through the controls. As we disembarked from the train, I fell in purposefully with an American family I had noticed earlier—a businessman from Chicago with a wife and two small children who were relocating to China for his company. I chatted with the wife and even helped them with one of their bags. The five of us slowly moved through the formalities as a group. It was a nonalerting way to arrive on the mainland.
Guangzhou was only a stop on the way to Beijing. I had a nine-hour wait before making my way to the airport for my flight, so I spent most of the time with my camera in hand, walking through the city and taking photographs. I happened on a group of elderly men and women in a park, playing mahjong. The game triggers incredible passions. To my surprise, fights broke out and people were yelling at one another; it was a very aggressive atmosphere. I was glad to see that the women were holding their own, though, and shot photos at close range. The players were so engaged in their strategies that they didn’t even notice me snapping pictures of them.
Beijing and Shanghai were amazing and mesmerizing and utterly exotic to my professional and photographic sensibilities. The sheer volume of foot traffic on the street was incredible. The crowds never seemed to taper off; no matter how far out of the city one drove, you never seemed to get to the edge of the population.
As the denied area focal point officer, I was in China doing a “passive probe” of one of the venues of my global domain. I had to be alert in case the Ministry of State Security decided to perform one of their entrapment operations on me. They wouldn’t think twice about sticking an American citizen in jail and throwing away the key. Rumor had it that at least one CIA officer had died in a Chinese prison. I was on my own, with no backup or lifeline.
I was there to examine the fabric of the society—the woof and the warp and the texture of the weave. Everything was interesting to me, including the ethnic diversity, which ranged from the clearly Mongolian features of some citizens to the almost Caucasian skin tones of others. Their clothing was uniform: dark pants, blue-gray jackets, flip-flops worn by almost everyone, and straw hats by the older ones. I studied their bicycles and accessories, and looked closely at the things they carried—bags, umbrellas, baskets, glasses, cigarettes, and pipes. No detail went unnoticed or unfilmed; thirty-six rolls of exposed film—well over a thousand images—would be my final tally for the two-week trip.
Our officers in China had work to do and were having difficulty finding places to do it. While there are many occasions when a crowd is useful—for masking the action you are performing, for instance—there are many other acts that can be performed only when you are alone: putting down a drop, mailing a letter, making a phone call, picking up a drop from an asset, a personal meeting. In China, it seemed to me, being alone was a luxury that no one could count on having outside—ever. It was impossible to be in a place on the street with any assurance that you were not being observed. My guidebook told me that Shanghai, historically described as “The Whore of the East,” encompassed 2,400 square miles. It didn’t just look big, it was big. It looked to me as if we were going to have to rewrite our operational handbook and reconfigure our tradecraft to this teeming crowd. Mentally, I began to write my report, which would go out of Shanghai before I headed home.
The two-week trip through China was something of a blur. I was so distracted by my personal emotions and feelings that I am afraid the CIA’s work suffered. If ever I have a staff again, and if one of them falls in love—madly, head-over-heels, stupidly in love—I believe I will fire that person, then and there. When you are in love, there is simply no focus, no grounding, ergo not much real work gets done. But I tried.
I missed Tony terribly. We were so entwined in our mutual work that we could almost finish each other’s thoughts and sentences. I wanted to show him how a collapsible bicycle would make all of the difference outside of Beijing at the Winter Garden and to ask him what he thought of using the Forbidden City as an operational arena. We knew it was loaded with cameras and surveillance, but it also came with lots of tight turns and dark corridors that might suit our purposes. I photographed all of it, knowing we would pore over the pictures together, brainstorming.
The morning before I left Shanghai, I walked out of the Portman Hotel on Nanjing Xi Lu, and headed for the river. The hotel had been a contender for my collection of world-class destinations, but had fallen a little short. Too tall, too new, and too western to be interesting, it never made the list. I collected a few sheets of stationery, though.
The two weeks flew by, my report went out, and I headed home, stopping in Japan and Hawaii on the way back. But the fact was, I was afraid to go home. All during the trip I had been thinking about Tony, and longing for him.
There was one small problem, however: my husband.
Two weeks after my return to Washington, John and I were meeting together with a lawyer. Typically amicable, we shared the same attorney, much to the horror of our mutual friends, who warned us that this would never work. They were almost right, in the end. But at the beginning it seemed the simple and nonconfrontational thing to do.
We had decided to dissolve our childless marriage in a civilized manner, even to remain friends—if that was possible. It took us one long night, a whole night of talking, to arrive at this decision. We talked and paced and yelled and cried several times. When dawn came, we had made some of the initial decisions about who would do what and how we would proceed. We agreed to sell the house and worked out how to divide things. The biggest stumbling block was custody of our two dogs, Chloe and Joe Cocker. In the end, John kept them—they were almost like his children, and he simply could not give them up.
Looking back now, it is interesting that John and I were so terribly worried about how to break this news to Margaret, the Indian housekeeper and cook we had brought back to the United States with us from the Subcontinent and who had become almost family to us. We both considered her a friend as well as an employee. When we told Margaret our news, she was distraught, almost beyond reason. We spent the better part of an hour comforting her. It was typical of our marriage that we spent no time at all comforting each other.
I packed a bag quickly, and put a few things in the back of my car. I took some pictures of my family, some favorite music, a pile of books that I was planning to get to next, and my cameras. It was as though the house were on fire and I could rescue only about a dozen things. There was really no thought process going on—it was that fight-or-flight thing, and I knew I had to get out of there now, or I might be stuck for a long time. The rest would wait. Without looking back, I drove quickly away from my house, and from my life and the last twenty-three years. It was perhaps the hardest thing I have ever done.
Of course, no divorce is so simple or so straightforward. What began as a friendly effort to do it nicely soon became more complex. Friends of mine, or at least people I thought of as friends, had told John that Tony had gone to China with me, and John chose to believe that. The more he pondered that idea, the angrier he got. I finally convinced him to look into the computerized badge system in the Agency—every employee reporting to work every day had to insert a badge to enter. While I had no idea what Tony had done while I was gone, I assumed he had gone to work. John worked in CIA security and had access to that badge database—he must have looked and learned the truth, because that disagreement seemed to abate.
And so, there I was—driving down Route 7 in Fairfax County with my bags in the back, no place to go, and no schedule to meet. It was late in the morning, before lunch, around eleven o’clock. I was crying so hard that it was difficult to drive, and my pulse was racing. I pulled into the parking lot of a bar I had never heard of—Shenanigans in Sterling—and tried to collect myself. I felt as though I had escaped from prison.
I called Tony.
He was working on an oil painting in his art studio, doing what he usually did on weekend afternoons.
“Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”
And he was.