Maybe he’d surprise everyone and instead convince her about coming out with him, defecting, quitting, leaving the danger, and the dread, and the risk, and starting a new life, together. What if she says, “Yes, let’s go, right now, I’m ready”? Nate thought. Besides meaning the end of his CIA career and the work that defined him, it would also mean the loss of the Agency’s best Russian source with irreplaceable access to Putin’s Kremlin. And he’d be the cause.
Dark ancillary thoughts emerged: Could either of them live without the sustaining excitement of this work, the knife-edge bustle of the street, the adrenaline high of stealing secrets from an implacable foe? What would their retired life be like? Would they look at the snowy Rockies from the porch of a log cabin? Or eat breakfast on a white balcony overlooking Biscayne Bay? Or throw another log on the fire in a cozy New England farmhouse? A conjugal dream or a constricting nightmare? Could either of them survive retirement? Gable always said that spooks dried up and died when they left the Game. Most Russian defectors went around the bend away from the Rodina; they missed the Motherland, the black earth, and the pine forests. Could he do that to her, to himself? Jesus, maybe he had scared himself straight, maybe she’d see the light too. Maybe they would move to the next chaste and professional level of superasset and sagacious handler, coolly taking care of business against Vladimir Putin and his predatory kleptocracy. Maybe.
And, anyway, what was that fucking Gable doing in Khartoum, now of all times?
TURKISH ZUCCHINI GRATIN
Halve small zucchinis lengthwise, then scoop out pockets, and fill with cubed feta cheese, chopped dill, and parsley. Cover zucchinis with béchamel and bake in medium oven until zucchinis are soft and topping is golden brown.
20
The Great Confluence
It was midnight. From the plane window coming in, Gable saw the bulbous, luminous blue-glass Corinthia Hotel on the river, a fat teardrop rising above the low brown wattle of Khartoum, otherwise punctuated only by a forest of lighted minarets. His plane banked farther and he could make out the al-Mogran, the Great Confluence, where the chocolate-brown Blue Nile joined the milky-blue White Nile. Outside the terminal, the brakes of the canary-yellow taxi squealed like a pissed-off baboon. Probably the red Sudanese dust on the pads, thought Gable. The shit gets everywhere. The drive from the airport to the US Embassy—it was south of town, on the banks of the Blue Nile—took an hour, down riotous four-lane Madani Street cloaked in blue exhaust, with traffic coming in and out from all directions, even at this hour. It was a familiar zoo. Khartoum. Gable was back on his old stomping grounds—the benighted Third World—where you debriefed recruited generals with sweat-shiny faces in gritty Land Rovers parked in stinking alleys, and the cotton-candy sandstorms three hundred feet high would rattle the house, red sand hissing under the door despite the wet towels jammed against the threshold, and where you got used to the sudden tire thump while driving at night, which was either something four-legged and furry, or a local sleeping off a tshwala beer bender in the middle of the road. You didn’t stop to find out, not at night.
The Third World. Russian diplomats posted to Paris didn’t need CIA guys to buy them baguettes, but meet a lonely Russian in barren, alien Khartoum, his family back in Moscow, and give him some shchavelya sup, sorrel soup, like his mama used to fix, and put on a DVD, and open a bottle of bourbon, and you could talk to him endlessly about American salaries, or muscle cars, or Las Vegas pussy, or maybe just about the freedom to choose, and some dust-stormy night with the shutters rattling, he’d say yes, and you’d have an SVR recruitment in the bag. Some of Gable’s best scalps came from the Sandbox.
