REAL HOUSEWIVES OF THE CIA 143rienced wives was semi-scandalous at the time.) The CLO would coordi-
nate congressional delegations, organize weekend trips for American staff,
and be involved in other morale, welfare, and recreation activities.
Outside of our work, we led a very active social life. Sure, I’d use her
as bait to lure my KGB target at an official reception, and she’d also gra-
ciously help me to spot and assess other foreign recruitment targets, some
of whom we’d otherwise have no interest in befriending. I can still recall
hearing her pleading something along the lines of the following on more
than one occasion: “I’m sure the Pakistani first secretary is a great guy,
but must we invite him and all eight members of his family to the beach
house for our only vacation of the year?” She also had to contend with the
kinds of harassment that women experience every day, in every part of
the world. One evening, we were at an informal expat party at someone’s
home. For some reason I was seated on the floor, and Stacy was standing
next to me. She was approached by the Egyptian ambassador, who began
to hit on her. I was too tired to get up, so I tugged on his pant leg. When he
looked down, I wagged my finger at him.
But we also socialized with the American community, went to wild
parties at the Marine House, and traveled extensively throughout the spec-
tacularly beautiful country of Palmera and elsewhere in Latin America.
We snorkeled with barracuda in the crystal-clear sea, canoed up a copper-
colored river to one of the world’s largest waterfalls, and hiked through
cool, foggy green mountains. The Palmera restaurant and nightclub scenes
were world-class (and affordable). Stacy even talked me into taking salsa
and merengue lessons. To this day I can’t sit still if I hear Wilfrido Vargas’s
“El Africano.” In the late 1980s, life was good in Palmera.
Predictably, my job often rudely interfered with our dream life. Just
before setting out one weekday morning on a “breaking and entering”
technical op to plant a listening device inside a priority hostile target orga-
nization’s beach house, located several hours outside the capital, my col-
leagues and I realized we needed one more vetted team member to provide
counter-surveillance. Our counter-surveillant would park his car on the
side of a remote jungle road to deal with “mechanical problems,” a couple
of kilometers away from the target beach house. Should any personnel
from the target organization unexpectedly drive past in their diplomatic-
plated car en route to their seaside villa, the counter-surveillant would alert