Islam.” He speculated, “If they’d been old enough during the Cold War, they would have told me I should try to understand Communism.” He assured us, “I understand both.”
Right. Hey, it sucks when your own kids think you’re part of the problem.
But Buck said philosophically, “The important thing is that I know I’ve spent my life doing what I thought was right—not just for me, but for my country, and for civilization—and also for my children and their children.”
Kate assured him, “You don’t need to justify your life or your work to anyone.”
Buck agreed, but said, “In this business, however, you are sometimes forced to compromise your own beliefs in the interest of the greater good—national security, global strategy, and so forth.” He confided to us, “During the Cold War, there were a few occasions when I had to betray or abandon an ally as part of a complex plan.”
No one commented on that, but I did wonder if he was hinting that the past was prologue to the future. Hopefully not.
Kate, too, spoke a bit about her background, including her wonderful FBI father, now retired, and her loony mother who was a gun nut, though Kate mentioned that only in the context of growing up around guns and learning at a young age how to hunt and shoot.
This was a great opening for her to tell everyone about how she whacked Ted Nash, but she didn’t go there. Maybe she was saving this interesting story for when we met our CIA teammate, thinking that the retelling of it would be even more interesting to a CIA officer. But I’m sure everyone in the CIA already knew this story.
I used our bonding occasion to tell some funny cop stories, which made everyone laugh. But to show it wasn’t all fun and games on the NYPD, I mentioned getting shot on the job, and my medical retirement, and my rocky transition from NYPD to the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force, and of course, my first case, where I met Kate Mayfield, the love of my life.
Paul Brenner seemed to have had an interesting and adventurous life in the military, but like most combat veterans, he downplayed his war experiences, and again he didn’t mention his clandestine mission to post-war Vietnam. But he did say he’d had a brief wartime marriage, though he didn’t say anything about his current lady in the States, and I didn’t expect he would; he seemed to be a private person. Also—how do I put this?—he was smitten with Kate Mayfield. Hey, no big deal. I think Tom Walsh has the same problem. And it wasn’t my problem.
Anyway, four-fifths of the A-team got to know one another a little better, which might or might not make us work better together. And with luck, we’d all get home and have a few stories to tell. Or, in this business, not tell.
I suggested a reunion. “We’ll meet at seven under the clock at Grand Central Station, just like in the movies, and we’ll go to Michael Jordan’s Steak House.”
Everyone liked that happy ending and we agreed to be there, date to be determined by fate. I wondered who, if anyone, would make it.
Buck paid for dinner as promised—sixty bucks, including tip, wine, and drinks. That’s a month’s pay for a Yemeni, and about four drinks in a New York bar. Maybe I should buy a retirement house here.
Anyway, showing the poor judgment of the intoxicated, we thought it was a great idea to go to the Russia Club.
Zamo drove us the few hundred meters up the road to Tourist City. The half dozen guards at the gate appeared to be Eastern European, and they looked tough and menacing with their flak jackets and AK-47s. But they recognized the American Embassy Land Cruiser, and probably recognized Zamo, and waved us through.
I said to Brenner, “They seemed to know you.”
No response.
Tourist City was a collection of five- and six-story concrete slab buildings, not unlike an urban housing project for the poor. But here, in Sana’a, it was the height of luxury, and more importantly, it was guarded. Not safe. Guarded.
I could see why Paul Brenner might choose not to live here; it was sort of depressing, but also an admission that you felt unsafe on the outside. And macho men would never admit that. They’d rather die. And often did.
There were a few low-rise buildings on the grounds, including a few shops, and in one of the buildings was the Russia Club.