“Nothing, sir.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

In the outer office, Wenner’s secretary, Viv Novek, winked at Lancette and gently touched the top button of her own blouse. Lancette looked down; her shirt had slipped open. She noticed a man sitting on the couch. She recognized him from the news reports: Jake Grayton. She blushed slightly, and he paid her the courtesy of turning away. She fumbled with the button. As she left the suite, Lancette whispered to Novek, “Shopping time.”

The elevator carried her to the basement. She walked down a corridor painted pale green and entered the gift shop. On the back wall hung T-shirts, jogging shorts, windbreakers, all bearing the CIA insignia. There were ashtrays, lighters, Swiss army knives, and miniature cameras emblazed with the emblem. The oversized shot glasses always amused her. Had the irony escaped the manager of the shop? She picked up a coffee mug and looked at the bottom: Made in China. A sign by the apparel read: “All CIA personnel should ensure that none of the merchandise sold here is used in a manner that would be considered inappropriate.” In other words, no posing for Playboy in a sweatshirt with a CIA logo. She selected a baseball jacket with the CIA seal on the back. Her brother’s birthday was coming up.

What a change from the old days, she thought as she moved through the shop. When anyone can wear CIA clothing, the mystique was long gone. She remembered how people had reacted when she told them she was working at the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence. Some eyes widened. Some people muttered, “how interesting.” But mostly this news was met with a sympathetic, oh-poor-you look, proof the citizenry shared her own belief that the Agency’s biggest sin—and there were many—was that it had become another sclerotic Washington bureaucracy, full of the mediocre. Screwing up the big calls. Missing moles. Protecting misdeeds so promotions were not threatened. Not much prestige came from working at Langley.

Now she told friends and family she had left the CIA for Inter-Business Media. Wenner had wanted to keep ICEMAN out of the Agency mainstream, so he had a front corporation established to house the operation. But Lancette retained access to the CIA caps, paperweights, and notepads everyone enjoyed receiving as gifts, and she explained this to her relatives and friends by noting she still had pals at the Agency who could get her into the gift shop. She disliked lying, but she had developed her own justification for keeping true to her cover story. Suppose you lie to someone out of necessity. If you are certain that when you eventually reveal the lie, that person will say, “Oh, I understand and that’s okay,” then you do not have to fret about it now. Everyone would understand this lie. Perhaps a husband or a boyfriend would not. But she did not have to worry about that.