Steve put his finger on her lips. “But your daughter, that’s just fate. It’s nothing to do…”
No,” she interrupted him. “No, it is the same thing. I am terrified she will also leave me.” Her eyes bore into his, “And now… Now I am with you, in a relationship that can never…”
“No. No. We’ll work something out.” He pulled her down to him again, “We’ll work something out.” They made love again. What was binding them together was far more powerful than any rational argument keeping them apart.
Yet Maya was right, Steve realized. What they were doing was totally insane. It was also completely contrary to CIA regulations. They would have to hide their affair now from Marilyn, the CIA, and Russian intelligence.
He had more success deceiving the professionals than his wife. Marilyn had flown in for a surprise visit from New York that morning. Steve, however, decided to keep the meeting he had set up with Maya the week before. Once again, Steve and Maya made love. Only this time, as fate would have it, the plumbing in her friend’s dacha broke down. There was no way he could wash. Still he headed home planning to quickly take a shower at the apartment before Marilyn arrived. She had planned to see some friends for lunch; instead, when he walked through the door, she was there waiting for him. Lunch had been cancelled. There was no way he could avoid putting his arms around her.
Her reaction was instantaneous. “Who the hell have you been fucking?” she asked. “Her spoor is all over you! It’s disgusting. How could you?”
Her outrage ended in a flurry of tears. Suddenly filled with remorse, Steve attempted to defend himself by offering an abbreviated version of the truth: this was a very brief liaison with a Russian woman he just recently met. It was an almost forgivable product of his frustration and loneliness at being apart from Marilyn. This one brutish act of his should not be allowed to destroy their marriage.
“You mean after screwing that woman you still love me?” She looked directly at him, her eyes red-rimmed.
“Of course I do.” He didn’t really lie, he told himself as he took a long, hot shower. He tried to analyze his feelings towards Maya. Was it love or just infatuation? In any case, there was no real hope that their relationship could flourish into something permanent. His assignment in Moscow was up in another month. He would be transferred back to the United States before being sent to another posting abroad. A fact he’d made no attempt to hide from Maya. And though they never spoke about it since their first night together, she also seemed to realize there was no way they could continue together. Even if Steve left Marilyn, he could not return to live permanently in Russia, nor was there any realistic way he could bring Maya and her daughter to live in the U.S. In any case, Maya was adamant that she would never leave her sixty-five-year-old mother alone in Moscow.
Which left Marilyn. She was bright, charming, and intelligent. Perhaps they really could start something new. That night he invited her to one of Moscow’s top restaurants, The White Rabbit. He ordered champagne.
“We’ve had a lot of problems,” he said raising his glass to her. “We’ve grown apart. I’d like another try at creating a life together. I’m sure we can make it work.”
Afterwards they returned to the apartment and made love.
A week later Marilyn flew back to the U.S. and began arrangements to move from New York to Falls Church and prepare for Steve’s return from Moscow. Over the next few weeks Steve turned over the agents he was running, including Maya, to his replacement. He made sure that Maya’s daughter would continue to get her medicine.
And Maya promised she would continue cooperating with the agency.
Steve was surprised to see Marilyn waiting for him at Dulles when he flew back to the United States. She was beaming and threw her arms around him. “Wow! Great welcome!” he said, pausing to catch his breath after a long, sensuous kiss. On the drive in, she talked excitedly about the house she’d rented.
“But we may need something bigger,” she grinned. He took his eyes off the road to stare at her.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“Darling, I’m pregnant!”
Steve almost veered off the road. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Wow, that’s great!” he said, trying to collect his thoughts.
“This is exactly what we need to give us a new start,” she said. “A real family.”
Over the following months, Steve watched Marilyn’s belly swell with new life, and felt he was falling in love with her again, but in a very different way. It was a wonderful time. The fetus she was carrying cleansed her of any lasting bitterness about Steve’s fling with “that Russian woman.” He also tried to forget about Maya, but it was difficult. From the Russian Desk in the agency, he continued to monitor from afar the valuable information she continued passing on. He couldn’t help feel a spark of jealousy toward his replacement in Moscow who was now running Maya.
At the same time, he was also increasingly concerned about Marilyn. She was now forty-three, well past normal childbearing age. Her doctors advised her to slow down, and pull back from her professional life, but her career as an artist had taken off. She was determined to maintain her output, as well as attend hectic gallery openings in Washington, New York, and Miami. Still, all the scans indicated that the fetus was completely normal.
Her water broke three weeks early while she was painting in her studio at home. She phoned Steve and told him she’d already called a taxi to take her to the hospital. When Steve arrived, the doctors assured him everything would be fine. Then something went wrong. The experienced obstetrician who had been following Marilyn was on another case and couldn’t get free. A much younger doctor was called in.
“Don’t worry,” Steve and Marilyn were told. “You’re still in excellent hands.”
Except the young doctor screwed up. Steve could never find out exactly what happened, but Marilyn agonized in excruciating labor for more than thirteen hours. Her screams spewed out of the delivery room and down the corridors of the hospital. Steve desperately tried to help; wiping away the perspiration streaming down her face, telling her everything was going to be all right as her nails dug into his hand and her face turned gray. He was telling her he loved her more than anyone on earth when her heart gave out.
The cardiac arrest unit tried desperately to resuscitate her. As if in a trance, Steve watched the heart monitor. He didn’t even realize that the nails of his right hand dug into the skin of the left hand until the blood flowed.
But the line stayed flat. They baby was born dead. It was a boy.
CHAPTER TWELVE:
Kabul and Falls Church
Immediately after the funeral, Steve requested to be posted to Afghanistan. He wanted to get as far as possible from the maternity ward in Falls Church, the horrific memories of Marilyn’s agonized screams, and the pitiful corpse of the tiny child, which was buried next to his wife.
He spent more than two years in the turmoil that was Afghanistan, facing the daily menace of ambushes, suicide bombers, and improvised explosive devices. It might have been argued that the ongoing casualties the U.S. was suffering and the tens of billions of dollars that America continued to pour into the shattered country were worthwhile, if there were a glimmer of progress. But the truth was just the opposite. In one report after another, Steve documented the rampant corruption of the Afghan government and generals pocketing the salaries of thousands of phantom soldiers. He wrote of the hopeless internecine tribal conflicts, the soaring production of opium, the hundreds of billions of American aid supposed to be rebuilding highways and schools and power stations going down the drain. But his reports were read, circulated, and filed away along with hundreds of other similar field reports that had been filed over the past few years. And the generals and politicians continued pouring American troops and tens of billions of dollars more aid into the country. His frustration mounted. His reports became increasingly shrill. It was all so futile.