3I hurried out of the embassy at a quarter to twelve. The moon-faced cop inside the Milicja booth craned his thick neck to peer at me as I bumped my Rabbit off the curb and onto Piekna Street. The traffic thickened when I reached Nowy Swiat Street. I braked hard to avoid hitting a rattletrap Trabant that pulled in front of me. I wanted to stomp on the gas and crush its rear end. Instead, I honked loudly and pulled around the sputtering vehicle.
I was furious with the spooks for planting their time-bomb in the middle of my life. And with myself for allowing them to do it. Three years before, when my first overseas assignment was abruptly curtailed, I thought I’d dead-ended in the Foreign Service. A pair of staffers from the Department’s Office of Counterterrorism decided the opposite. They
