me, working for the Feds like everyone else these days. One of the wives, Ann Burke, was an MOS—Member of the Service—and still on the job, working in the 103rd Precinct. The other lady, Marie Savino, was a stay-at-home mom with two crumb snatchers under five and one in the oven.
Which gave me an idea. If Kate were to get pregnant—like about four hours from now—then the Yemen thing was off. I reached under the table and ran my hand over her thigh. She smiled.
Anyway, we tend not to talk business when we’re out, but tonight I said, “Kate and I have been asked to apply for a posting to Yemen.”
Ed Burke, a former NYPD detective with the Intelligence Unit, advised, “Just say no.”
Tony Savino said, “I know two guys who were there.”
I inquired, “What do they say about it?”
“I don’t know. No one has ever heard from them again.”
This got a big laugh. Cops have a sick sense of humor.
I informed everyone, “I was actually there for a month in August 2001. The beaches are topless. You get your head blown off.”
Good laughs.
“John.”
“In Yemen, the men are men and the camels are nervous.”
“Enough, please,” said Kate.
So I dropped the subject.
But Tony said, “Seriously, the two guys I knew who were there said there’s no place safe outside the American Embassy.” He added, “They know who you are when you get off the plane, and you have a target on your back every time you move.”
I already knew that. And now Kate had heard it from someone else—but she did not waver. In fact, she’s stubborn. She said, “If we don’t go, someone else will have to go.”
Hard to argue with that. But the problem, as I saw it when I was there, was that we had a very small American presence in a very hostile environment. A recipe for disaster. Ask General Custer about that.
We dropped the subject completely, or so I thought until Ed Burke said to the waiter, “I’ll have the camel dick on a stick.”
Everyone’s a comedian.
Sunday morning we got up late and I offered to make breakfast. I asked Kate, “Do you feel like pickles and ice cream?”
“What?”
“You should make sure you’re not pregnant before we see Walsh tomorrow.”
“John, I’m on the pill.”
“Right. How about scrambled eggs?”
We had breakfast, read the New York Times, and watched a few morning news shows. BBC is really the best source of world news that Americans don’t give a shit about, and we tuned in just in time to discover that there was yet another civil war going on in Yemen.
Apparently some tribal leader in the north named Hussein al-Houthi was trying to topple the government in Sana’a and restore the Imam to power and create an Islamic fundamentalist state. Hussein, according to the reporter with the British accent, wanted to kick out all the foreigners and infidels in the country and return Yemen to Sharia law. Not a bad idea. Kicking foreigners out, I mean. Me first. Hussein also wanted to cut off the head of Yemen’s longtime dictator president, a guy named Ali Abdullah Saleh. Hussein sounded like a guy who took the fun out of fundamentalist.
Kate hit the mute button and said to me, “I didn’t realize there was a war going on there.”
“There’s always a war going on there.” I inquired, “Did you know that Yemen has the highest ratio of guns to people in the whole world?” I explained, “They have to do something with those guns.”
She didn’t reply, but I could sense she was rethinking her year abroad.
We belong to a health club on East 39th Street, and we spent a few hours there, burning off the beef fat from Michael Jordan’s and sweating out the red wine.
Kate and I stay in pretty good shape, and we also spend time at the pistol range. If we were FBI accountants, we probably wouldn’t bother with any of this.
I needed a drink after the health club, so we walked up to Dresner’s, a neighborhood pub where they know my name too well.
We took a table near the window and ordered two beers to rehydrate.
Kate asked, “Do you want to talk about Yemen now?”
I replied, “I thought that was a done deal.”
“Well… I’m still leaning toward it, but I want you to go with me.”
What she actually wanted was for me to talk her out of it. My role—if I choose to accept it—is that of bad guy. But I didn’t want to play that role