appeared stringy and unwashed. As she reached for her teacup, I noticed her shaking hands.
“Tired? Hungry?” she asked in our own coded language.
“Hungry,” I said. “And I need a drink.”
We never talked specifics of our missions, but tired meant things hadn’t gone well, hungry meant things had, and need a drink meant exactly that.
She signaled for the waiter to bring us two mai tais. “I went ahead and ordered us the cashew chicken and pineapple fried rice.”
“Perfect.” I took off my gloves and set them on the table. Sally’s eyes drifted to my left hand for a moment before looking away. She let the silence linger—an old trick she must’ve forgotten she’d told me about, something she picked up during the war to get people to start talking. People will do anything to fill an uncomfortable silence, she’d said. I sipped from my mai tai and remembered Sally had prefaced her invitation to a late dinner by saying we needed to talk. I’d thought nothing of it then, but now it was all I could think about. “You wanted to tell me something?” I fished out the blue paper umbrella from my drink and popped the cherry on the tiny sword into my mouth.
“Nothing big.” She sipped her drink through the blue straw, careful not to disturb her lipstick. “Just wanted to find out how your New Year’s Eve was.”
“Two turns down the bunny slope and I was done. Spent most of the night in the lodge sipping hot cocoa by myself.”
“I imagine Teddy’s a fine skier. The naturally athletic type.” She rarely mentioned Teddy, and certainly never complimented him.
“I suppose so.”
“Well, my New Year’s Eve was as lovely as ever,” she said after another long sip. “Went to a party. Danced all night. Drank a little too much, you know how it goes.”
She was punishing me. “Sounds like a gas.”
The waiter came with our chicken, and again I was thankful for a chance not to talk. Sally wielded her chopsticks like a pro. I reached for a fork and stabbed a piece of pineapple.
After the waiter took away our plates, Sally took a deep breath and said in rapid succession that we could no longer see each other, that she was thankful for the time we’d had together and for our friendship but it would be better for both of us if we went our separate ways, that she was about to be too busy with work and wouldn’t have much time for socializing anyway.
Her words felt like kicks to the stomach, again and again, and I could hardly breathe by the time she was finished. The word “friendship” stung the most. “Of course,” she concluded, “we’ll remain on professional terms at work.” It seemed she wanted to say more, but didn’t.
“Professional,” I repeated.
“Glad you agree.” Her indifference was cruel. I wanted to tell her I didn’t agree. No, I wanted to scream it. The thought of no longer spending time with her, of having to treat her professionally, of having to pretend there was never anything between us, made me sick. I wanted to tell her I’d rather walk barefoot across barbed wire than make polite chitchat with her in the elevator. And I wanted to ask her how she could—how it was so easy for her to turn off the switch.
But I didn’t say anything. And it wasn’t until after I stood up, after my knees hit the underside of the table, spilling the pink mai tai on the tablecloth, after I turned to leave, after I heard her tell the waiter I wasn’t feeling well, after I stormed out, after my walk broke out into a run—it wasn’t until after all that that I realized my silence was also an answer.
CHAPTER 17
THE TYPISTS
We’d speculated about Irina since she’d arrived at the Agency. And our suspicions were confirmed shortly after Sputnik took to the skies and Gail saw her name on a memo pertaining to the Zhivago mission. She never spoke of the work she did after hours, and we never asked. Like a good Carrier, Irina said nothing of the secrets she carried. But still, it wasn’t long before we found out the rest.
What made Irina stand out in the typing pool was precisely that Irina didn’t stand out in the typing pool. Despite the winning lottery of ingredients comprising her physical appearance, she had the ability to go unnoticed. Even a year after her joining the Agency, she still managed to fly under our