Lion Eyes

by Claire Berlinski

  All this talk of cooking was making me hungry. It didn’t seem to me that the CIA needed to lose sleep over Dave’s determination to publish this. It wasn’t going to be igniting any literary bidding wars anytime soon. I wondered how I could get out of giving it to my agent.

  In the next two chapters, Jane scored triumph after triumph in Bulgaria, earning praise from her superiors and admiration from her colleagues. Little did they know that the secret ingredient in her success was real vanilla bean, procured by Bob on the black market from the rebellious teenaged daughter of a Tahitian diplomat. “Jane presented the Russian arms dealer with my tempting vodka-soaked real-vanilla-bean cake with real-vanilla-bean crème anglaise. It was, she told him, a token of her deep respect. But Ivan didn’t know our secret: the cake pan contained a listening device, which I had baked right into the Teflon and covered with a rosette of decorative icing. It worked to perfection. Jane listened to him smack his lips all night long. Then, just before he passed out, sated, he began mumbling, confirming her suspicions. Those helicopter gunships weren’t destined, as he had insisted, for a Bulgarian Army recruitment video. They were going directly to embargoed Liberia.” The recipe for the cake followed, with both metric and imperial measurements, so you could follow it in any country.

  Bob did the baking; Jane got the credit. “I was proud of my wife and proud of the role I played in the wings, making America safer and stronger. My admiration for her only grew and grew.” I yawned and shifted around in the tub, accidentally getting the bottom of the manuscript wet. I supposed I could tell him that I thought his work was too edgy for a timid conservative agent like mine. She couldn’t handle a firestorm like this, Dave. She’s establishment; you know? Your work is too honest, too raw. You need a visionary. You need the kind of agent who would have handled William Burroughs.

  At last, midway through the book, the action moved to Turkey. “Jane and I were thrilled when she learned we would be stationed next in Istanbul, the legendary world capital of espionage. At first, the city of minarets straddling the mighty Bosphorus was a dream come true. We decorated our apartment with colorful carpets from the exotic bazaar. Jane was a natural at bargaining—and not just for carpets. Within two months, she had wooed and won the trust of an elusive target, a Syrian diplomat stationed in Istanbul on whom the Agency had long had its eye. The homesick diplomat cracked when Jane brought his sick wife a pot of my authentic Aleppo lentil soup.

  “But at home, increasingly, Jane seemed troubled. Her trips abroad lasted longer and longer. I suspected the War on Terror was taking its toll. For the first time, I watched Jane pick at her food. She said she was trying to lose a few pounds: she had taken up jogging. I tried to ignore the misgivings I felt deep in my heart.

  “Then one day, my cousins from Wyoming came to Istanbul. We took them out to dinner. Cousin Bill told Jane he was an avid golfer. ‘Oh, I adore golf,’ Jane replied. When she said that, I began to shake. For I knew the truth. Jane loathed golf. That was when I could no longer push the awful thought out of my mind: my wife didn’t lie to other people because she had to. She did it because she liked it.”

  Their marriage took two long chapters and nine more recipes to go south. I thumbed through the pages with impatience, thinking about getting out of the tub and fixing myself some lunch. What the hell, I decided; I’ll just send it to my agent. Let this be her problem. I was about to put it down when I saw the first words of the next chapter: “One weekend, Jane announced she was going to Paris. She was after an archaeologist who worked in the ruins near an underground Iranian nuclear weapons bunker.”

  I turned off the tap and turned the page so fast I gave myself a paper cut.

  “When she came back, she was different. I had prepared a lamb tandir for her, roasted in a traditional Turkish wood oven.” The recipe followed. “But she said she wasn’t hungry. I asked her what was wrong. Had there been a snafu in the operation? Not at all, she told me. It had been a textbook recruitment. The Iranian had fallen into her lap like a piece of ripe fruit. In fact, it had gone better than she had dared to hope.

  “Then what was it, I asked?

  “That was when she turned to me and in a voice that chilled me to the core, said, ‘Bob—I’m not in love with you anymore.’ ”

  My cut finger was bleeding into the tub, and the water had turned cold, but I turned the page, and then the next. There was nothing else about the Lion. The rest of the book concerned roast duck, creamed spinach, and Bob’s heartbreak at discovering, to his surprise but not mine, that Jane was actually a lying, conniving whore.

  The book’s conclusion, however, was rather unexpected. Evidently, in one of those bizarre fifteen-minutes-of-fame flukes, Jane’s turtlecam appearance had been discovered and recorded by a devotee of hot webcam amateurs, who posted it on his website, giving it a “five-horn” rating, leading to its widespread reproduction, distribution, and ultimate recognition as a minor classic among connoisseurs of the genre—who numbered, unfortunately for Jane, one very interested employee of the CIA’s internal security division. She was fired unceremoniously, not for sleeping with her boss (she was actually on line to be promoted for that) but for having failed to notice she was under video surveillance. This, apparently, was one security blunder too many.

  And that was how it ended: “I lost my wife and she lost her job—all because the CIA turned her into a cheating skank with the morals of an alley cat who tossed my heart in the garbage like yesterday’s pot roast.”

  • • •

  I got out of the tub and bandaged my paper cut. Then I lay down on my bed and tried to figure out how it must have happened.

  . . . “Arsalan,” said Sally, “I have to say I was fascinated by what you told me last night about the ruins at the Burnt City. I very much admire your intellect and your commitment to scholarship. It sounds as if your work is truly remarkable.”

  “How kind of you.”

  “What I’m about to say may come as a surprise, and I’m afraid to say it may disturb you.”

  He raised an eyebrow and took a sip of coffee. “Mmmm?”

  “Well, as you know, I work for the United States government.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I was so impressed with what you had to say last night that I called Washington immediately to tell them that I believed we had found a perfect consultant—someone truly knowledgeable. And I learned something that I’m going to tell you in strictest confidence. Something that I think you have the right to know.”

  Puzzled, he tilted his head.

  Sally leaned in closer to him, lowering her voice. “It’s come to our attention that your government is hiding weapons—very serious weapons—in a bunker near the Burnt City.”

  “What?” He put down the coffee and looked around the café. “How do you know? Why are you telling me this?”

  “Don’t worry, Arsalan, no one is watching. I made sure of that.”

  “You did what? Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m someone with access to very high policy makers in the United States. And I’m someone with responsibility for this kind of question.”

  “My God . . . you’re a spy! Why are you telling me this?”

  “I’m telling you this because I know you care about the Burnt City. And because I’ve been authorized to ask you to help us.”

  “That’s insane! I don’t want anything to do with you.”

  “Wait! Wait, Arsalan; hear me out. Just listen to what I have to say. Sit. Please sit.” He froze, half out of his chair. “We need to know what’s down there. We don’t know where the bunker is, exactly. We can’t take the risk of missing it. If we don’t know where it is . . . well, figure it out for yourself. Thousands of innocent people will get hurt. The Burnt City will be destroyed. But if we know exactly where it is, we can target it. We can save it . . . and everyone around it.”

  “You’re going to bomb us.”

  “You can’t be surprised to hear that it’s an option we won
’t take off the table. Look, I don’t know what’s going to happen—that’s up to your government, not mine. But we’re going to stop this insane regional nuclear arms race, one way or another. You know we need to do it, and you know we will do it. The only question is how.”

  Arsalan stared at her. “What are you asking of me?” he said at last.

  “My government cares deeply about human life, and it cares about those priceless artifacts. We have precision-guided missiles. They have been tested extensively, and they work—but they work only when we have accurate targeting information. If we know exactly where the weapons are, we can take them out without even touching the ruins. But if we don’t know what we’re looking for . . . well . . .” She tore her napkin into little pieces then let them rain down on the table. “Use your imagination . . .”

  But how had they found him in the first place? I supposed it hadn’t been difficult.

  . . . HQS SUGGESTS TARGETING PFMOONRAY ARCHAEOLOGIST WITH ACCESS TO PFQUICKSAND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE FOR RECRUITMENT. HQS HAS OBTAINED LIST OF SUITABLE CANDIDATES AND HAS INSTRUCTED MXFREEWAY TO BEGIN SURVEILLANCE OF PHONE AND E-MAIL RECORDS TO BEGIN SUITABILITY ASSESSMENT . . .

  . . . HQS NOTES THAT (IDEN A) HAS EXCELLENT ACCESS TO PFQUICKSAND. HIS WESTERN BACKGROUND AND HOSTILITY TO PRMOONRAY REGIME MAKE HIM A GOOD CANDIDATE FOR RECRUITMENT. (IDEN A) HAS BEEN CORRESPONDING WITH (IDEN B), A US CITIZEN WHO COULD BE USED AS ACCESS AGENT . . .

  . . . HQS WISHES C/O TO REMEMBER THAT (IDEN B) IS A NOVELIST WHO HAS WRITTEN ABOUT TQDEATHSTAR AND AS SUCH IS A MAJOR OPSEC RISK. C/O SHOULD ENCOURAGE (IDEN A) TO END RELATIONSHIP WITH (IDEN B) BY EMPHASIZING RISK TO HIS OWN SAFETY . . .

  So Arsalan had not been targeted in error. He had not been kidnapped and handed over to Jordanian torturers, nor had he been taken to Guantanamo Bay. He had not been assassinated by Iranian hit men. Nor was Arsalan was some insignificant scalp Sally was collecting to impress her promotion panel. She had been telling the truth, for once, when she said my cooperation was vital to national security.

  Could I really blame Sally for telling Arsalan that if he were to work with them, he must not contact me again? For telling him that he—and the operation—would be at risk if he did? Given the stakes, had I been in her position I would have done the same. If I read in the newspaper that the CIA had shared the details of a sensitive and critical intelligence operation with the author of a tell-all book about the CIA called Loose Lips, would I not be aghast at their recklessness and incompetence?

  And could I blame Arsalan for agreeing to help her? After all, what was our relationship compared with a five-thousand-year-old city and all the living creatures above it?

  I lay silent on the bed, my mind wandering. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. Now, now . . . Here’s looking at you, kid.

  I saw Arsalan, elegant in a white suit, lifting his glass of gin from afar, toasting me from his window against the azure minarets of Isfahan.

  He was telling me that we would always have Paris.

  • • •

  Later that summer, I visited my brother in Turin and spent many hours with him discussing the novel he was writing and its characters. There were quite a number of them, and vivid they were, too, all living in the small apartment he shared with his girlfriend, who had developed an intense personal rivalry with one of the more minor players. (She wasn’t sure what my brother was doing with that character while she was at the office, but she knew she didn’t like the sound of it.) Since the novel was set among an animist hill tribe in Thailand, they lived as well with each of the protagonists’ nine souls and a goodly number of jungle spirits. Much like Princess Diana’s marriage, that apartment was a bit crowded. When I left, my brother was murmuring darkly about the difficulties of finding a competent exorcist in Italy, one who was not always on strike.

  Inspired by my brother’s creative example, I banged out a proposal for a new novel of my own and sent it to my agent. I sent her Dave’s manuscript, too, with the passages about Arsalan excised. I told her she needn’t even read it if she didn’t feel like it, but could she please do me a favor and send him a very tactful rejection letter. She assured me she’d had a lot of practice sending very tactful rejection letters. Dave went back to America. He said he was going to apply to study at the Culinary Institute of America. I told him to keep in touch, but he didn’t.

  Samantha and I continued to correspond. Her book was published at the end of the summer, shortly before mine. It was ecstatically well received. Michiko Kakutani called it “pathbreaking,” and Universal bought the film rights. It sold so many copies in its first three weeks that Samantha’s publisher eagerly snapped up Lynne’s companion memoir about falling in love with a man who was in fact a woman, and rushed it into print to capitalize on Samantha’s wave of popularity. The two women had not seen each other in person since their trip to Paris. Lynne claimed never to have forgiven Sam—but they continued to write to each other eight or nine times a day.

  In October, Sam appeared on the Today Show as both Sam and Samantha. When she told Katie Couric the story of Lynne, viewers across the country were moved. Lynne opened her e-mail the next morning and found herself deluged with letters from romantic Americans who urged her to see what was right before her eyes: whether or not Sam was a woman, he loved her; he truly loved her. Lynne’s publicist begged her to reconcile with Sam, preferably in public, better still on Oprah, and Lynne, worn down by the barrage of letters accusing her of heartlessness, agreed. Shortly afterwards, Vanity Fair ran a nine-page spread of photographs of the reunited couple, posing in a series of faux-domestic tableaux. After that, I didn’t hear from Samantha for a while; she and Lynne went to Cozumel to get away from all the attention.

  I realized sometime during the autumn that I had not heard from Imran in a while. It was unlike him to be out of touch in such an unscheduled way. I sent him a note, asking why he’d been so silent, and received no reply. I called him. The message on his answering machine told me that he was out of town; if this was an emergency, I should call an ambulance. I supposed he must be on vacation.

  I kept up with my Internet surfing, reading the news from Iran with special care. I had searched Arsalan’s name on Google many times in the months since Dave’s visit, but so far had found no news of him. From time to time I searched Sally’s name as well, but she seemed to have disappeared into the great void of the un-googleable.

  Shortly before the winter holidays, I searched them both again, but as usual, I found nothing. Out of idle curiosity, I tried Dave’s name. I had never found any reference to him on the Internet before, but this time his name popped right up. He was in The Book Standard. In fact, he was their top headline.

  RAW TALE OF CIA SPOUSE SPARKS BIDDING WAR

  December 03, 2004

  By Donna Weinstein

  Dave Melill, 36-year-old author of Diamonds Are Supposed to Be Forever, You Lying CIA Bitch, an edgy, brutally honest look at the secret life and recipes of a betrayed CIA spouse, has signed a three-book deal with Knopf, the winner of a spirited bidding war.

  The deal has sparked rumors that the advance was the largest ever paid for a book about the CIA.

  “We can confirm that we have signed a world rights deal,” said Paul Daugaard, Knopf’s Executive Director of Publicity, Promotion, and Media Relations. “We’re very excited to welcome him to our publishing family.”

  Bravely resisting the impulse to rend my garments, I picked up the phone and called my agent, who, unusually, took my call—the receptionist must have been a temp. “Well, I guess things worked out really well with Dave,” I said to her. I didn’t mean to say what I said next; it just sort of came out. “Why is he getting that kind of advance? I mean, I write edgy, brutally honest books about the
CIA, don’t I?”

  “Well, Claire,” she said, in an I’ve-got-a-lot-of-practice-being- very-tactful tone of voice, “thing is you’re a highbrow kind of writer. You’re more literary.”

  Was she nuts? I am all about commercial popular fiction. After telling her that I knew a lot of recipes, I hung up the phone. I decided I should call Dave to congratulate him, but when I dialed his number, a woman with a Slavic accent picked up. She was his personal assistant, she told me. No, he was not available to take my call.

  I hung up. Now I was really depressed. I saw my new mail icon swish up, and opened the message. It was from Imran. Oh good, I thought dully; he’s back safely.

  I had to read it twice to convince myself that I’d read it right the first time.

  Imran had eloped.

  • • •

  Imran was writing to me from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where he had flown to marry his new bride, Gulmira Beknazarova, eighteen, and to adopt her three children: Nurbek, four and a half; Bogdan, three; and Nurdeen, seven months.

  Imran had met Gulmira on the Internet two weeks before. I am not sure how he found the link to www.amoreinkyrgyzstan.net; he declined to explain. When he saw her ad, he told me, he knew he had to write to her. He sent me the link to her profile so I too could admire the wonder that was Gulmira. “This lady is seeking marriage with a man from the West,” read the words above her photo. “Why not make this beautiful lady your wife?” Gulmira fl6186 was posed in gold satin hot pants and a matching halter top. I hadn’t realized that Kyrgyz women wore such colorful native costumes. She looked too young to drive.