96 AMERICAN SPYgot our typhoid shots and our first of many official passports and made
travel arrangements for our one-way flight to Palmera, Latin America.
After the dizzying and bittersweet late-night send-off at the Skydome
lounge, we left DC early the next morning for Palmera via Miami Interna-
tional Airport.As the giant aircraft made its final descent into Palmera International
Airport, it struck me that this was for real now. I’m operational, and I’m offi-
cially in violation of another country’s espionage laws. Surveying my new country
of residence for the first time through the plane’s window, I was awed by
the beauty of the country’s green, rugged mountainous coastline, much of
it engulfed in shadowy rain clouds. Ugly modern buildings and run-down
but functional ranchitos dotted the hillsides. I was about to embark on my
next adventure, and I was as happy as a dog with two tails. (As it turned
out, in Latin America I rarely had a tail, but during my travels to Yugo-
slavia it was not uncommon to be dogged by two.)
In the mid-1980s, life in this large Latin American democracy was
idyllic, for most locals and foreigners alike. It was more complex than
this, but the life I led there can best be summarized as running covert
operations around the clock for the CIA while living the good life, not
unlike that depicted in the record-shattering “Despacito” music video.
We moved from a one-bedroom apartment in Arlington to a large,
two-story, station-provided villa in a leafy, upscale residential neighbor-
hood of Palmera. Our backyard was a lush paradise, where we could
pick bananas, mangoes, and papayas from our covered tiled patio, while
watching colorful parrots swoop past between tropical rain showers. It
did not suck.
My three-year tour was more productive, successful, and enjoyable
than I could have ever imagined. But something that happened my very
first week in-country knocked me off-balance and has me scratching my
head to this day.