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concluded that the FSB had used at least one agent provocateur—Khanpasha Terkibayev—to direct the terrorists to the theater. Sergei Yushenkov, a liberal politician, interviewed Terkibayev about his involvement. Soon afterward, Yushenkov was shot to death in Moscow, and Terkibayev died in a car accident in Chechnya. I was furious, but George just shrugged. “It was decided as soon as Putin made his speech. The rest of us, we’re just following history.” I was thin-skinned back then; I sent an angry cable to Langley to make my frustration part of the record, then requested a transfer to someplace a little quieter.
    And it worked. For a while it did. After Moscow, agent management in Vienna was like a vacation, and when I met Celia Harrison in Vick’s office, I was convinced I’d finally ended up in the right place. I had learned from dealing with my agents how to handle women of interest, and so I asked Celia questions about herself. She was an orphan, having lost both parents in a car accident as a teenager, and she was wise enough to know that she’d come to the CIA to replace the parental structure that had been stolen from her. Ireland had been her first foreign posting, and she’d thrived there.
    When she admitted to having become a fan of rave music while in Dublin, I insisted on taking her around to the local venues. I escorted her to Flex, the Rhiz, and the Pratersauna, and with a steady supply of mixed drinks and Advil I was able to survive the pounding noise and underaged crowds. I eventually grew to enjoy it myself. We danced—when was the last time I’d really danced ? Celia fit so perfectly into my hands that I believed that not only had I come to a more peaceful place, I had become someone different in Vienna. For the first time in memory, I was learning to enjoy myself.
    Yet she and I took time. In a handful of alcoholic slips we made out behind clubs, but she kept me at arm’s length. I soon learned that while she was giving me a little of herself, she was also giving much more of herself to other men. I had to learn to set aside jealousy. I learned how not to possess a woman.
    I’m still not sure how we moved from friends to lovers—whatever alchemy took place, it happened in her head. She had moved to a desk in the embassy, working under Bill, and our time together was suddenly cut in half. I pined for her, but I’d grown used to that ache. I suspect that absence really did make her heart grow fonder, for in a Turkish restaurant in Wieden she said, “I’m tired, Henry. Take me home.” Only once we reached her apartment did I understand the full meaning of her words.
    And there it was, precisely as I had hoped when I met her in Vick’s office. We were in love, and for more than a year we made a sort of life together, piecing together hours under the cover of clandestine life in a foreign land. For once I was satisfied, which is really all anyone can ask for.
    Then 2006 happened. During the two months leading to the Vienna Airport debacle, the newspapers came alive with reminders of Moscow. Two more members of the Russian investigating team that had looked into the Dubrovka Theater disaster were assassinated. Anna Politkovskaya was shot in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. In London, Aleksandr Litvinenko was poisoned by exposure to polonium-210. My anxieties returned: the fear, the shame. I even brought up the subject to my Islamic contacts, and they shook their heads, unmoved. The tragedies that civilization faces come at an alarming rate, and dwelling on something three years old is akin to fretting about Roman history.
    Maybe I should have read the signs better. Maybe the reminders of Moscow could have changed what followed. All I know is that those reminders only made me more desperate to make our relationship work. I redoubled my efforts to build a life with Celia, and in the middle of the Flughafen situation I even