142 AMERICAN SPY
would inevitably cease. (I sometimes used this effective method myself
when responding to nosy relatives and acquaintances, although the old
standby, “If I am a CIA agent, no one told me,” also left them baffled.)
After I shipped off for several months of paramilitary and tradecraft
training at the Farm, Stacy and I would see each other on most weekends
back in DC. This meant that soon after leaving her family and moving to
DC to be with me, she found herself alone all week at our apartment. But
wait, I’m not as much of a cad as you think! Before abandoning my bride,
I taught her how to use a tactical shotgun for home defense (and close-
range quail hunting), and she put her new skills to good use one night (for
home defense, not for quail hunting). Situationally aware, Stacy noticed
that a man was kneeling down outside the door to our eighth-floor apart-
ment, looking through the small gap between the floor and the bottom of
the door. He didn’t knock and silently stayed put when she asked who he
was and what he wanted. Our moderately priced apartment complex had
a front desk on the ground level, but no one answered her repeated calls
for help.
At that point Stacy’s training kicked in. She grabbed the twelve-gauge
Mossberg riot gun from the closet, walked to the door, and confidently
pumped it once. The unmistakable sound of a shotgun round entering the
chamber was enough to convince the Peeping Tom to make like a sheep-
herder and get the flock out of there. He never returned. At least not to our
apartment.
Life as a CIA wife in Latin America was, for the most part, pretty sweet. We
moved from our one-bedroom Arlington apartment to a large, furnished
Spanish-style villa, complete with an outdoor shower. (I never actually used
it, but for some reason I found it comforting to know it was there, just in
case.) We even had a housekeeper; my mom insisted I needed one ever
since those long-ago days when I was just a messy little kid, tricking my
friends into drinking their own urine. Stacy landed a job as the US embas-
sy’s assistant commissary manager, taught aerobics, and later became the
community liaison officer (CLO), a prestigious job normally reserved for
more senior spouses. (Her merit-based selection over older and more expe-