Shift: A Novel

Project Eurydice

It hit her as she passed through the muted spotlight over the inner door: not just the heat, the smoke, the urgent murmur of voices. The need. Though no one actually stopped what he or she was doing to inspect her entrance, she still felt her presence sizzle through the room like an electric current. Felt the sidelong glances and equally circumspect feelings that accompanied them, that ineffable combination of lust and derogation on the part of the men, sympathy and jealousy on the part of the women.

The emotional miasma swirled around her as palpably as the smoke. Against its press, all she could do was fasten her eyes on the bar and forge ahead. Fifteen steps, she told herself, that’s all you have to take. And then you can reward yourself with a nice tall glass of gin.

The men looked at her openly now, their stares as tangible as the sweaty hand of a soused uncle at a wedding reception. Barely five feet, four inches in heels, Naz was inches shorter than the rangy lasses scattered around bar stools and tables, but there was something oversized about her presence. Her pearl-gray dress directed their attention to her hips, her waist, her breasts—her cleavage—but it was her face that held them. Her mouth, its fullness made even more striking by lipstick the color of a darkened rose; her eyes, as large and dark as walnuts. And of course her hair, a mass of inky black waves that sucked up what little light there was in the smoky room and radiated it back in oily rainbows. Or who knows, maybe it was just her nose, which had more length than any native-born woman could carry off, let alone work to her advantage. It would be thirty or forty years before anyone in the room would recognize the faint dimple in her left nostril as the mark left behind by a nose ring, ceremonially administered on her thirteenth birthday, and removed less than a year later when Uncle Kermit put her on a plane to the States carrying a single suitcase equipped with a false bottom into which the remnants of her mother’s jewels had been stuffed. Even without that tidbit of knowledge, everyone in the bar could see the newcomer was foreign. Exotic. If it was a husband she wanted, a boyfriend, some kind of lasting connection, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. She was too strange. But strangeness was a virtue in her line of work and, well, no one came to the Firelight for a lasting connection.

The women noticed her too, of course. Their stares were as hard as the men’s but significantly less friendly. They recognized her for the threat she was. It was Tuesday, after all. Business was slow.

“Hendrick’s and tonic?” The bartender was already setting a chilled Collins glass on the bar. “Easy on the tonic?”

The man’s voice and face were professionally neutral, but Naz could feel the pity behind them, knew just what he thought of her. Knew too that it didn’t prevent him from wanting her, like all the other men in the room.

“A slice of cucumber, please,” Naz answered. “I haven’t eaten anything all day.”

She tried not to gulp her drink as she perched on the bar stool and turned halfway out. Not quite facing the room—that would read as too obvious, too desperate—but not quite facing the bar either. The perfect angle to be looked at yet not seem to be looking back.

She brought her glass to her lips, was surprised to find it empty. That was quick, even for her.

“Another?” The bartender was already there, his voice a bit bolder, the heat of his desire a degree warmer. Naz knew it would happen one day. It always did, and then she would have to find another bar.

“May I get this one?”

She turned rapidly on her stool. A young man was sitting next to her. She wasn’t sure if he’d been there the whole time or if he’d sat down after she arrived. He was tall and taut as a ripcord on a parachute, affected a broad-brimmed fedora that he pulled low on his forehead despite the heat and the dimness of the bar. Naz noted that it was an expensive-looking suit, probably bespoke—Saville Row, she guessed, acquired during his postcollegiate European tour. Cartier watch, matching silver cuff links. So he was a rich boy, which automatically set him apart from everyone else in the bar, as did the fact that he radiated none of the sexual energy everyone else here did. But his smooth-skinned, shadowed face, though slightly smug, was honest looking. All Naz felt was curiosity and a slight sense of … of mischief almost. No malevolence. No lust. But still. A free drink was a drink.

“Thank you.” She tried not to clutch the drink. “My name is Joan.”

“Really?” The boy’s mischievous grin widened. “I thought it was Nazanin. Nazanin Haverman.”

Naz’s blood went as cold as the drink in her hands. The drink. She looked at it a moment, then drained it in a gulp.

“Easy there, Miss Haverman. I’d rather not have to carry you out of here.”

“Pardon me, but I think there’s some kind of mistake. My name is Joan.”

“Really? Joan what?”

Naz’s eyes darted around the bar. No one ever asked for a last name. She caught a glimpse of her panicked face in the mirror over the bar. “Mir-ren,” she stuttered. “Joan Mirren.”

The boy looked at the mirror a moment, then back at her. “Nice save, Miss Haverman. Now,” he went on, “I can show you my identification in here, or I can save you the embarrassment and you can walk outside with me.”

Naz realized she was still clutching her glass like a lifeline. She thought of throwing it at him, running, but knew she wouldn’t get anywhere. Not in these shoes, this skirt. Not after two gin and tonics. And there was still no sense of malice coming from the boy, nor the kind of contempt she’d encountered during her one or two run-ins with Vice. Indeed, she almost thought she sensed compassion.

Straightening her back, she offered him her widest smile. She would snatch what victory she could from this disaster. “Put your hand on the small of my back as we walk out,” she said. “So it looks convincing.”

As the boy followed her out, he said, “If I wanted to be convincing, my hand wouldn’t stop at the small of your back.”

“If you want to keep your fingers,” she said, “they won’t go any lower.”

Once they were outside, she quickened her step a half pace to dislodge his hand from her body. They walked a block in silence to the edge of a small park. The air was brisk and cleared her head a bit, even as the alcohol calmed her nerves and dulled her senses. I can handle this child, she told herself. Everything will be just fine.

The boy motioned through the gates. The gesture was diffident, almost abashed, and part of her wondered if he’d ever been unchaperoned in the company of a female.

She shook her head. “Let’s see that ID.”

The boy grinned again, reached inside his jacket. Naz saw the Henry Poole label and congratulated herself for guessing his suit’s origins, then chided herself for losing focus. He brought out a slim wallet and flicked it open. Instead of a badge, she saw a simple white identification card. His employer’s name had been printed in full, and she had to squint to read the tiny letters in the faint light.

She looked up at him. “Do you really expect me to believe this?”

The boy shrugged, as if acknowledging the incongruity of someone as young and innocent looking as him belonging to such an organization. As he slipped his wallet back inside his suit, he said, “Do you remember a man by the name of Kermit Roosevelt?”

Naz’s eyebrows rose. Uncle Kermit had been one of her father’s closest friends and business associates in Tehran, had dined with the family at least once a month.

“Mr. Roosevelt was, as they say, our man in Tehran, and your father, owing to his lifelong residence in Persia, was one of his most valuable assets.”

Naz smirked, but it was an act. This boy wasn’t lying. She could tell by the awe in his voice, as much as any sense of his emotions.

“My father was a British citizen. Why would he work for the Central, the Central …” She couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud; the idea of her father as a spy was just too absurd. “Why would he work for the United States rather than the English?”

“Like many British nationals living abroad, your father admired everything about his fellow tribesmen save their country itself. As proof,” he said in a slightly louder voice, “I offer the simple fact that he sent you here when the fighting broke out, when it would have been just as easy to send you to England.”

Naz was silent a moment. Then, almost against her will: “Have you … do you know what happened to him? Or to my …” Her voice broke off.

She felt a wave of compassion from the boy, but it was detached, almost intellectual: he kept his hands in his pockets rather than putting one on her shoulder.

“I was still in prep school when the counterrevolution occurred.”

“So was I.”

The boy winced. “I know that your time in this country hasn’t been easy, Miss Haverman. Your adolescence was plagued by emotional problems. Depression, anger, and, ah, sexual precocity.”

A fresh wave of emotions washed over Naz, but they were all her own. Sadness, self-loathing, utter horror, not just at what she had done, but that it was known by others. By this boy, and his intrusive employer, which was famous for rooting out the shameful secrets in people’s lives and holding them over their heads like the sword of Damocles. Which beggared the question: what did he want with her?

When she could speak again, she said, “It’s a little rich having my adolescence referred to by someone who looks like he only started shaving a few years ago. Okay, then. You’ve established your bona fides. Isn’t that how they put it? So tell me, Agent …”

The boy had to reach for a last name just as she had in the bar.

“Morganthau.”

“Tell me, Agent Morganthau: what exciting service can I perform for the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America?”

The boy paused a moment, jaws slightly parted, eyes wide. Naz was reminded of a phrase her father had often used, always citing Henry James when he did so: hang fire. Technically speaking, it meant simply a pause, but it had originated as a munitions term, referred specifically to a delay between the moment you pulled the trigger and the time it took the powder to spark the bullet and propel it from the barrel. Whenever her father said someone hung fire, Naz always had an image of that person holding a gun to her father’s head. But now it was pressed against hers. The trigger had been pulled; she was merely waiting for the bullet to strike home.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” he said finally. “Have you ever heard of LSD?”

He took her to a small restaurant just off Newbury Street. Roses in the wallpaper, crisp white tablecloths free of stains or cigarette holes, golden sconces with beveled glass refracting soft light over the patrons. A far cry from the Firelight, to say the least—although the pairings were still the same, Naz noted. Older men, younger women, the latter leaning slightly forward to show off their cleavage. Services paid for in kind, of course: jewelry, furs, second homes in Newport or Miami. Give her the cleanness of cash any day.

Morganthau held out her chair for her, then sat down opposite, his frat-boy grin bookended by a pair of impishly proud dimples.

“Well, this is a little nicer than that other place, isn’t it?”

Naz stared at him flatly. “This isn’t a date, Agent Morganthau. Settle down.”

A waiter set menus in front of them. “A cocktail before dinner, perhaps?”

“I think we’re fi- …”

“Hendrick’s and tonic,” Naz said over Morganthau. “Make it a double. And bring me an ashtray, please.”

“I wasn’t aware you smoked,” Morganthau said after the waiter had left the table.

“Well, that’s one thing you don’t know about me.”

Morganthau blushed. “Yes, well. I did want to ask you about something.”

“Didn’t you read it all in Dr. Calloway’s files? God knows I told him enough times. I ‘overempathize.’ I’m ‘unable to mediate’ my or others’ feelings. As a consequence, I form undue attachments or aversions as soon as I meet someone. Humiliating crushes or inexplicable disgust, both of which have the effect of leaving me isolated in a fantasy world where—how did Calloway like to put it? Oh yes: ‘where fact is washed away in a tidal wave of feeling.’ He thinks it’s because I lost both my parents and my country when I was so young. Everyone I encounter is a potential savior or murderer.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m going to kill you.”

“Well, I certainly don’t think you’re going to save me. So,” Naz spoke over his protest, “to flesh out your skeletal tale of my life: my first suicide attempt came at ten. Pills; something Mrs. Cox, my guardian’s wife, took to get her through the long days when he was at work. I lost my virginity at eleven. Mr. Cox; something he did to get through the long nights when Mrs. Cox was too numb from pills to notice him. I also seduced two of my teachers when I was twelve—one of whom was female, I might add—and I tried to kill myself for the second time the same year when we were caught by the school secretary. Running car this time, closed garage door; alas, the gardener needed a pair of pruning shears for Mrs. Cox’s damask roses. I changed schools six times over the course of the next three years, had sexual relations with nine different partners ranging in age from twelve to forty-seven, and sliced my wrists with Mr. Cox’s razor when I was sixteen. The following fifteen months on Thorazine were by far the most peaceful of my life. Alas, I turned eighteen, and Mrs. Cox, seeing her husband’s legal obligation discharged and unwilling to spend $25,000 a year to maintain the daughter of a long-dead ‘business acquaintance’—apparently she was as blind to her family’s relationship to the CIA as I was—I was summarily discharged. I was given an allowance of $5,000 a year, the proceeds of a small trust my father had set up for me before he … before he …”

She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She had never said it, but now Morganthau said it for her.

“He died.”

Naz was silent a moment. She reached for the fizzy highball the waiter had just set in front of her. “Yes. Well. My preferred medication is rather more expensive than that, so I supplement my income with the generosity of men looking to relieve their loneliness for an hour or an evening.” She drank from her glass as though as it were water and she’d just wandered in from the desert. When only the ice and lime remained, she set it back down on the table and signaled to the waiter for another. “Did I leave anything out?”

Morganthau was silent. Naz couldn’t tell how much of this he’d already known, but she could feel the effect her rendering had had on him. His grin faded, his eyes softened, and he’d begun compulsively straightening his silverware like a drill sergeant worrying a troop of raw recruits. Pity exuded from him like cheap cologne. A tepid feeling to be sure, but Naz knew how quickly its warmth could grow into a full-fledged fire. And, try as she might to resist this warmth, she could already feel the heat in her own body, the need to validate this man’s compassion, to be worthy of it. She thought about driving her knife into her chest but couldn’t, because she knew how much it would hurt the boy sitting across from her, and because the white silk blouse she was wearing was her last clean shirt.

“Actually,” Agent Morganthau said finally, “I wanted to talk to you about MIT.”

Naz squinted. “MIT?”

“You participated in a pair of studies …”

“I know what I did at MIT. What I want to know is why you care what I did at MIT.”

Morganthau recoiled from the tone of Naz’s voice.

“Perhaps I should step back a moment. I’m not here to hurt you, or punish you, or anything like that. To the contrary. I was assigned to look after you. Your father performed a valuable service for the Company, and it is my duty—my honor, I should say—to see that that debt is repaid.”

Only someone as young and naive as the boy across from her could have made such a speech, and it was precisely that youth and naivete that made it ridiculous.

“I can look after myself very well, thank you.”

“Pardon me for being blunt, Miss Haverman, but you’re an alcoholic and a prostitute. If that’s what you call looking after yourself, I’d hate to see what you call neglect.”

In answer, Naz turned her wrists upward, nudged the watch on the left and the bracelet on the right to reveal the thin pale scars beneath. She held them in the light for a moment, then turned them down again.

“By my own standards,” she said quietly, “I’m doing great.”

She saw his fingers tremble, felt him fight the urge to take her hand. It was too easy to imagine him sweeping her up in his arms, pressing her cheek against his hard flat chest and wrapping his strong arms around her. She could feel herself wanting this to happen, yet knew that in an hour or six, when she had given him more than he’d have ever dreamed of asking for, the urge to protect her would fade away, replaced by disgust.

But right now there was just the heat.

“I’m just curious,” Morganthau said huskily. “You seem to hate psychologists and hospitals and every other institution devoted to emotional and physical caretaking. So what made you volunteer for three different studies testing—what was the term? ‘psychic aptitude’?—over the course of six months?”

Naz shrugged. “They paid.”

“Ten dollars for a full day’s work. I would think a woman of your beauty makes more than that on a single date.”

Now it was Naz’s turn to blush. “I have no doubt you know exactly how much I charge. You seem to know everything else about me.”

“Actually, I don’t. And”—Morganthau raised his voice to speak over her—“I’d rather not. I find it tragic that any woman should have to resort to those means to support herself, but for a lady of your character, it’s maddening. I want to find every man who ever took advantage of you and cut his heart out.”

They didn’t take advantage of me, Naz thought. I took advantage of them. Or I took advantage of myself—it amounts to the same thing. But she didn’t say it aloud.

“I was curious,” she said instead, aware that it was the same word he’d used. “Dr. Calloway told me it was all in my head. My empathy. My inability to screen out others’ feelings. He meant that I was making it up, but I found myself wondering: what if it is in my head? Not in the way Calloway meant. What if there’s a biological or genetic or, I don’t know, magical cause for this torture I’ve had to endure every minute of every day of my whole life? These waves of emotion washing over me every time I come within ten feet of someone—love and hate, fear, anger, lust, greed, all pressing down on me the way raindrops fall on other people. At least then I’d have an explanation for what I’ve done, what I’ve felt. And, who knows, maybe a cure, as well.”

“But the studies you participated in were testing for a different kind of psychic ability, weren’t they? Telepathy, prognostication, and remote viewing. None of these is exactly the condition you describe. Anyone can see that you’re special, Naz. Anyone.”

Naz could feel the desperation beginning to grow in him. The need to convince himself—to convince her—that he could help her. No, she told herself. She didn’t feel it. She heard it in his voice, saw it in his hands, his eyes. The cues were physical, not mental.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but my results actually fell below statistical norms. Dr. Calloway was right. It is all in my head. The only emotions I feel are my own. And they are terrible, Agent Morganthau. Terrible.”

His hand moved toward hers, but just then the waiter arrived with a second round of drinks. By the time the waiter left, Morganthau had regained some of his composure.

“It’s funny. I initially thought of approaching you with this idea because I deduced from your file that you had some interest in the paranormal. I wouldn’t have guessed that your motivation was so …”

“Weird?” Naz said. She too had calmed slightly. All hail the great god gin.

“I was going to say ‘normal,’ actually,” Morganthau said. “I mean, it makes more sense to me when a person for whom all the usual channels of aid have failed turns to superstition. It’s when rational people get interested in this stuff that I get confused.”

“The world is strange enough on its own, eh, Agent Morganthau?”

“I’ll say,” he said, sounding for a moment even younger than he looked. He blushed and sipped at his drink. “So I asked you before if you’d ever heard of LSD.”

“Actually, the clinician who ran the second study I participated in—the one on prognostication—mentioned it to me. He said several studies had shown that it proved beneficial to schizophrenics and other patients suffering from acute mental disorders. He even gave me the name of one working at Harvard—O’Reilly? O’Leary?—but when I went there, it turned out he’d left the institution.”

“Leary,” Morganthau said. “He was asked to leave, actually. His methodology was a little too unorthodox for Harvard.”

Naz’s eyes narrowed. “You sound like you know something about him.”

“Just what I read in his file. His interest in LSD and the Company’s ran on tangential tracks.”

“And what exactly is the Company’s interest in LSD?”

Morganthau waved her question away with a smile. “‘Need-to-know basis,’ as they say.”

“Then let’s return to our original subject: what is the Company’s interest in me?”

“The Company’s only official interest in you is in a caretaker capacity, as befits the debt owed to your father. But the Company is also looking for people to assist in its LSD investigations, and I thought you might be interested in helping.”

“You want me to take LSD?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Then what?”

“I want you to administer it.”

“To …” Naz’s eyes suddenly went wide. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Morganthau refused to meet her gaze. “The Company requires a few things from its subjects. First, that they be completely ignorant of the fact that they’re being given the drug. And second, that they be unwilling to pursue the matter should the drug cause them any adverse effects.”

“And who would be less likely to pursue matters than a man given the drugs by the prostitute he was sharing his evening with? And I assume the corollary is true as well? That if I refuse to help you, you’ll report my own illegal activities to the police?”

Morganthau blushed yet again. It was clear Naz wasn’t the only intoxicated one at the table. “Before I met you, I would have said yes, that was the reasoning behind it. But, having spent an hour with you …”

“Two, by the way I reckon these things.”

Morganthau’s blush deepened. “After getting to know you, I would be hard-pressed to do anything that might cause you harm.”

“But?”

“But I’ve already included your name in my report. If I don’t recruit you, there will be questions. Repercussions. Though I wouldn’t turn you in, someone else in the Boston office surely would.”

“So your hands are clean, is that it? It’s the Company that’s doing this to me, not you?”

“You have to understand, Miss Haverman, there are goals here that are bigger than you or me.”

“Is that what Kermit Roosevelt told my father? Because if he did, he was right. What my father did for the Company not only got him killed, my mother, and my aunt, and three housemaids, and how many hundreds, thousands, of other innocents. Yes, I know,” she said. “I’ve always known, on some level. Whatever, you don’t need to persuade me. I know a losing battle when I see one. But I want compensation.”

“Of course.”

“Five hundred dollars per ‘subject.’” She said the word as lewdly as possible. “And I want protection. I’ve heard people do some crazy stuff on this drug, and I don’t want someone acting his Jack the Ripper fantasies out on me for the sake of science or national security.”

“I’ll be in the next room the whole time, Miss Haverman.”

“The next room?”

“Watching,” Agent Morganthau said. “For the sake of science, of course. And national security.”

Three days later, Naz walked into another bar. The King’s Head. Other than the name, everything was the same—the gray dress, the dim lighting, the need for a drink. Even Morganthau was there, tucked into a back corner, his face lost beneath the shadow of his fedora. There were the girls and the men, the choking press of desperation and lust, and of course the bartender; the cold glass in her fingers, the soothing chill of gin sliding down her throat, the nod yes, get me another. The only thing different was the tiny glassine in her pocket, the even tinier stamp of paper inside it.

“Stamp” was the right term, for the paper was embossed with a profile of Thomas Edison. “Big fan of cocaine,” Morganthau had told her; and then, when she didn’t laugh: “Kind of an inside joke.”

But she had more than that. She had a mark too. “Although I suppose you’d call him a john,” Morganthau had said, his cheeks turning red even as he forced a laugh.

“John, Mark, what’s the difference?” Naz had answered, her cheeks coloring almost as much as Morganthau’s. “It’s all Tom, Dick, and Harry to me.”

Morganthau had given her a photograph but not a name. “You need to be surprised when he speaks to you.” He told her nothing about the man. Not why CIA was interested in him nor what the Company hoped the “experiment” would prove. Instead, the agent told her about himself.

He’d been recruited while still at Yale. It was no secret the Company was thick with the university’s alumni, and he knew he was a prime candidate: president of the College Republicans, possessed of a trust fund sizable enough to cover the shortcomings of a government salary, and a track star to boot (javelin and high jump, although how these skills would serve him as a spy was unclear). He was passionately patriotic—had had to be talked out of going to West Point but then signed up for ROTC without his parents’ knowledge—but his desire to join CIA was motivated by more than mere love of his country: he believed it was a moral imperative for the United States to deliver freedom and democracy to the enslaved populace of the Soviet Union. The world stood at a precipice. Forget what Khrushchev said about burying us. The United States and its allies possessed a clear military advantage with both conventional and nuclear weapons. Western economies were humming along while Eastern Bloc nations were having a hard time keeping the lights on. Now was the time to make a concerted push into Red Europe, with propaganda, with money, and with arms if need be. Forget South America for the moment, forget Africa and Asia; these were just distractions from the real battle. As Hungary had shown a few years ago, the citizens of Russia’s satellite states were ready to revolt, and if the United States backed them in that uprising, there’d be NATO troops in Moscow before John F. Kennedy stood for reelection. The worst possible outcome was that he might win a second term.

His idealism and zeal had impressed his higher-ups, but, no surprise, they hadn’t decided to change the course of Company policy based on the theories of one Yale poli-sci major, even if he had been graduated summa cum laude. After a brief training period—munitions, hand-to-hand combat, and the “utter boredom” of ciphers and cryptography, he’d been sent to “cut his teeth” in the Boston station before eventual reassignment (he was fluent in German, and hoped for a place in the Berlin station). Although what he was supposed to cut his teeth on was a mystery. Boston hadn’t been a center of intrigue since the Tea Party. Morganthau thought there might be some action at the docks—contraband, human smuggling, something like that—but most of his job consisted of taking meetings in spindly old colonial houses with spindly old colonials who, after cucumber sandwiches or shortbread, would produce wads of cash (none of them trusted banks, and one man, who didn’t even trust paper money, pulled out a bag of gold coins) and talked about “funneling” it to anti-Communist forces in Chile or Vietnam (their choice of words made Morganthau think of a pneumatic tube running under Nob Hill all the way to Santiago or Saigon). One of them had asked point-blank why we didn’t just shoot “Uncle Joe” already (this was the man with the gold); when Morganthau pointed out that Uncle Joe had been dead for almost a decade, his host had looked confused for a moment, then winked knowingly. “Still a secret, eh? Well, mum’s the word, old boy, mum’s the word,” and he had gesturally locked his lips and thrown away the key.

Probably his most interesting assignment had been chaperoning the activities of a half-cocked Harvard psychiatrist named Timothy Leary, who was conducting experiments with a powerful hallucinogen called lysergic acid diethylamide. Technical Services hoped the drug might have military applications. Apparently it was so powerful that the municipal water supply of a city the size of Boston could be tainted with just a few quarts of the stuff, leaving it susceptible to invasion or even the illusion of invasion—all you’d have to do is tell the citizens that the tanks were on the way, and their amplified imaginations would take care of the rest. In his eighteen months in Beantown—Beantown! even the nickname is boring!—the boy had often thought of dumping acid in Boston’s water supply, just to break the monotony. To make things worse, he had been instructed to watch Leary’s work from afar; photographs of Leary’s notes were brought to him by someone who worked in the office of the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Morganthau had argued that Leary’s experiments could prove much more informative to the Company if they were actually directed, and had argued for a chance to speak to the psychiatrist directly, but before approval was granted Leary was fired by Harvard, who found his experiments rather less interesting than CIA.

That left him with Naz. The assignment had come from none other than James Jesus Angleton, who felt that Naz had the potential to be recruited either by the enemy abroad or by pro-Communist forces working in this country. Her father had been killed working for CIA; her mother had been collateral damage, and along the way she lost her country and her family. Her emotional fragility was well known, and it was easy to imagine a scenario in which her resentment was stoked until she turned against the country that had taken her in. Morganthau had chafed against the surveillance at first—it seemed prurient, if not simply voyeuristic—but that had all changed when he saw her for the first time. Saw the haunted look she seemed always to wear on her proud, beautiful face. Saw the way she gulped her drinks down in an obvious—and obviously futile—effort to numb the pain. And saw the way she degraded herself with men who weren’t worthy of opening a door for her, let alone opening her blouse, her skirt, her . …

He had watched a lot. And, though he didn’t say it aloud, it was clear he wanted to see more.