RainStorm

this leak is coming from, so I can close it."
    "You think the problem is on your side?"
    I shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time. I learned a long time
    ago that democracies are dangerous to work with. They're hindered
    by all those annoying checks and balances, all that meddlesome
    public opinion, so they have built-in incentives to find ways
    of doing things off the books. Sometimes it gets a little hard to follow
    who you're dealing with."
    She smiled. "Want Castro whacked? Hire the Mafia."
    I smiled back. "Sure. Or, if Congress won't cough up the appropriations,
    fund the Contras through the Sultan of Brunei."
    "Or bankroll almost anything by getting the Saudis to pay for it."
    "Yeah, don't worry, I see your point."
    She moved her hands up and down like a pedestrian trying to
    slow down an oncoming car, the gesture both impatient and
    suppliant. "Sorry to belabor it. But you have to understand, Nine-Eleven
    put America into a bad state of schizophrenia. The country
    committed itself to a 'war on terrorism,' but still pays billions of oil
    dollars to the Saudis, knowing that those dollars fund all the groups
    with whom America purports to be at war. Fifteen of the nineteen
    Nine-Eleven hijackers were Saudi, but no one wants to talk about
    that. Can you imagine the reaction if the hijackers had been Iranian,
    or North Korean? I think if America were a person, a psychiatrist
    would classify her as being in profound psychological denial.
    I don't know how you can trust an employer like that."
    "Do you trust yours?" I asked.
    She looked down. Her hands descended gently to her lap. After
    a moment, she said, "It's complicated."
    "That's not exactly a ringing endorsement."
    She sighed. "I trust their intentions. Some of the . . . the policies
    are stupid and outmoded. But I don't have to agree with every
    decision to know I'm doing the right thing."
    From her body language and her voice, I knew that my question
    had troubled her. But not for the reasons she had just articulated.
    There was something else.
    "Do they trust you?" I asked.
    She smiled and started to say something, then stopped. She
    looked down again. "That's also . . . complicated," she said.
    "How?"
    She looked left and right, as though searching for an answer.
    "They trained me and vetted me," she said after a moment. "And I'm
    good at what I do. I'm resourceful and I have a track record to go on."
    She took a sip of the Laphroaig and I waited for her to go on.
    "But, let's face it, what I do, I sleep with the enemy. Literally. It's
    hard for people to get past that. They wonder what it makes me
    feel, whether it might. . . infect me, or something."
    "How does it make you feel?" I asked, unable not to.
    She looked away. "I don't want to talk about it."
    I nodded and we were silent for a moment. Then I said, "You're
    taking a lot of risks with this operation. Maybe more even than
    usual. Some people might argue that, with me in the picture, with
    the guy at the hotel, things have gotten unacceptably hot for you,
    that you should get out. But you haven't."
    She smiled, but the smile didn't take.
    "Are you trying to prove something?" I asked. "Trying to earn
    someone's respect by putting your life on the line here?"
    "What would you know about that?" she asked. Her tone was a
    little sharp, and I suspected I was on to something.
    I smiled gently. "I fought with the U.S. in Vietnam. Against 'gooks'
    and 'zipperheads' and 'slopes.' Look at my face, Delilah."
    She did.
    "You see my point?" I said. "It took me years to realize why I
    was willing to do some of the things I did there."
    She nodded, then drained what was left in her glass. "I see. Yes,
    you would understand, then."
    "Are they worth it, though? They send you out on these missions,
    at huge risk to you, you bring back the goods, and still they
    don't trust you. Why bother?"
    "Why bother?" she asked, tilting her head to the side as though
    trying to see something she had missed in me before. "Have you
    ever seen an infant with its legs torn off by a bomb? Seen its
    mother holding it, insane with grief and horror?"
    A rhetorical question, for most people. Not for me.
    "Yes," I said, my voice quiet. "I have."
    She paused, looking at me, then said, "Well, the work I do prevents some of these nightmares. When I do my job well, when we
    disrupt the flow of funds and materiel to the monsters who strap
    on vests filled with explosives and rat poison and nails, a baby that
    would have died lives, or a family