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Celtic supporters, not to mention an explosive device that almost blew off his hand.
    I didn’t find out about the bomb until we had left Scotland forever, but I remember coming out of our house one morning to find my father’s Jaguar covered in graffiti. Soon after that, my parents and I, and my three brothers and two sisters, went to live in Boston where my dad had wisely accepted the position at Tufts. He has never returned to Scotland and probably never will.
    The move was something of a wrench for us all. And it was only later that I was able to see how being a Catholic had defined me in the eyes of my Scottish friends. Of course, none of this mattered in Boston, and my religion soon seemed less important as I learned to think of myself not as a Scot, or a Scottish-American, or even a Catholic, but as just an American; in the USA what seemed to matter more than where I was from or what religion I practiced was where in life I was going.
    After we came to Boston, my father stopped being a Catholic altogether.
    After graduating from Boston College and Harvard Law, I went to work as an intern with a firm of New York lawyers, DLB&B, but I was already coming to the conclusion that I was more interested in working in law enforcement than in becoming an attorney. Nine-eleven only underlined that. DLB&B’s offices were in the old WTC 7, which was badly damaged when the North Tower of the WTC collapsed; it caught fire and fell some six or seven hours later, by which time I was quite certain that I wanted to serve my country in some way. The following Monday I put in an application to join the FBI.
    After Quantico, I had four years working in Counterterrorism in NYC. All we did was work to make America safe. I even learned to speak Arabic. I can speak the language reasonably well—although my Italian is better—but I found it hard to read and write, which is what the Bureau wanted most: agents who could read intelligence documents in the language, so that was that. The Bureau always figures it knows best where a man’s talents really lie. And in 2008 the Bureau sent me to Texas to work in Domestic Terrorism.
    After more than ten years with the Bureau, however, I’m still just a Supervisory Special Agent and nothing more. Fact is, I might be an ASAC right now if only I’d been willing to work in the Chief Division Counsel’s office, but being a lawyer with a badge wasn’t why I joined the Bureau. My boss, Gisela, is an ASAC—an Assistant Special Agent in Charge—and so is Harlan Caulfield; but the field office boss, the Special Agent in Charge, is Chuck Worrall, who doesn’t like me at all. And maybe, if I am being honest here, it’s not just because I didn’t want to work in the CDC’s office.
    You see, Chuck is from Washington, and he was previously Nancy Graham’s boss. After our affair was over, Nancy Graham resigned from the FBI and it’s my opinion that Chuck held me responsible for the loss of a very promising agent.

    From Lakewood we went to the Houstonian Club, where Danny went down the water slide and Ruth swam fifty laps. Ruth is a beautiful swimmer, very elegant, with a flip turn a dolphin would be proud of. I sat under an umbrella and read a newspaper and watched the other guys around the pool watching Ruth. She’s worth a look. In her swimsuit she has a physical grace and a presence that always reminds me of an Olympic athlete.
    When Ruth was through swimming, she came and lay next to me under the umbrella. She played with the hair on my chest while I stroked her head. Ruth is a very loving woman. It’s not her who has the sexual problem, it’s me. It’s said that most men prefer their wives to be a lady in public and a whore in the bedroom. Well, I’ve got a saint in the bedroom, the kitchen—pretty much everywhere you can think of. You try fucking a saint. What else do you call it when the minute after you’ve fucked someone they start reading the Bible or saying their goddamn prayers?
    When