112 AMERICAN SPY
colleagues stood and thanked us for coming. We shook hands all around,
and they dismissed us with a bow.
As Stacy and I were leaving the restaurant, walking slowly across the
parking lot to our Caribe, I was trying to process what had just happened.
My thoughts were interrupted by Stacy grabbing my arm. She uttered just
one word to me, phrased more as a rhetorical question: “Seriously?”
Since this was my first overseas assignment, it would be the first but far
from the last time she would ask me that same question, in that same tone,
and with that same look on her face.
The following week, Mr. Kang called me at the office to invite me to a
one-on-one lunch with him at another, smaller Chinese restaurant. Again,
I accepted, happy to have an official Chinese developmental and grateful
Stacy would not have to endure another round of Jeopardy!—Espionage
Edition on behalf of spouse and country.
As discussed in chapter 9, in the mid-1980s, the CIA was running a
semisecret war in Nicaragua, supporting the counterrevolutionary Contras
against the repressive Sandinista government. (For what it’s worth, as of
this writing, “El Piricuaco,” President Daniel Ortega, continues to kill and
abuse his own people.^1 ) The capital city of Managua was a dangerous
place at the time, and China had an embassy there.
Over lunch, apparently confident that he now had me right where he
wanted me, Mr. Kang pulled out his list of requirements. He got right to the
point. What the Chinese government really wanted to know was whether or
not the United States planned to escalate and invade Nicaragua militarily.
Mr. Kang evidently believed that (1) I was privy to this sensitive information,
and (2) I would share it with him over Chinese-government-funded hot-and-
sour soup, now that we’d bonded in such a meaningful way.
In point of fact, Mr. Kang was standing on my last nerve. My patience
had not only worn thin, but it was also as tattered as that last ISIS flag
taken down by coalition forces in Mosul.
Rather than indignantly rebuff his request the way any normal
“running dog” CIA officer would, I discreetly looked over both shoulders
before leaning in, encouraging him with my body language to do the same.