“Of course,” he said. “You’re my best writer. I’ll do anything I can, within reason, to keep you happy.”

“Thank you.”

“And, coincidentally, I’ve been thinking that we need to strengthen our bureau in one particular foreign country.”

“Which one?”

“Poland.”

“You’d send me to Warsaw?”

“That’s where it’s all happening.”

“All right,” she said. “Poland it is.”

• • •

Cam Dewar was fed up with Jimmy Carter. He thought the Carter administration was timid, especially in its dealings with the USSR. Cam worked on the Moscow desk at CIA headquarters in Langley, nine miles from the White House. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was a tough anti-Communist, but Carter was cautious.

However, it was election year, and Cam hoped Ronald Reagan would get in. Reagan was aggressive on foreign policy, and promised to liberate intelligence agencies from Carter’s milk-and-water ethical constraints. He would be more like Nixon, Cam hoped.

Early in 1980 Cam was surprised to be summoned by the deputy head of the Soviet bloc section, Florence Geary. She was an attractive woman a few years older than Cam: he was thirty-three, she was probably about thirty-eight. He knew her story. She had been hired as a trainee, used as a secretary for years, and given training only when she kicked up a stink. Now she was a highly competent intelligence officer, but she was still disliked by many of the men because of the trouble she had caused.

Today she was wearing a plaid skirt and a green sweater. She looked like a schoolteacher, Cam thought; a sexy schoolteacher, with good breasts.

“Sit down,” she said. “The House intelligence committee thinks our information out of Poland is poor.”

Cameron took a seat. He looked out of the window to avoid staring at her chest. “Then they know who to blame,” he said.

“Who?”

“The director of the CIA, Admiral Turner, and the man who appointed him, President Carter.”

“Why, exactly?”

“Because Turner doesn’t believe in HUMINT.” Human intelligence, or HUMINT, was what you got from spies. Turner preferred SIGINT, signals intelligence, obtained by monitoring communications.

“Do you believe in HUMINT?”

She had a nice mouth, he realized; pink lips, even teeth. He forced himself to concentrate on answering the question. “It’s inherently unreliable, because all traitors are liars, by definition. If they’re telling us the truth they must be lying to their own side. But that doesn’t make HUMINT worthless, especially if it’s assessed against data from other sources.”

“I’m glad you think so. We need to beef up our HUMINT. How do you feel about working overseas?”

Cameron’s hopes leaped. “Ever since I joined the Agency, six years ago, I’ve been asking for a foreign posting.”

“Good.”

“I speak Russian fluently. I’d love to go to Moscow.”

“Well, life’s a funny thing. You’re going to Warsaw.”

“No kidding.”

“I don’t kid.”

“I don’t speak Polish.”

“You’ll find your Russian useful. Polish schoolchildren have been learning Russian for thirty-five years. But you should learn some Polish too.”