Kate assured him, “You don’t need to justify your life or your work to anyone.”
Buck agreed, but said, “In this business, however, you are sometimes forced to compromise your own beliefs in the interest of the greater good-national security, global strategy, and so forth.” He confided to us, “During the Cold War, there were a few occasions when I had to betray or abandon an ally as part of a complex plan.”
No one commented on that, but I did wonder if he was hinting that the past was prologue to the future. Hopefully not.
Kate, too, spoke a bit about her background, including her wonderful FBI father, now retired, and her loony mother who was a gun nut, though Kate mentioned that only in the context of growing up around guns and learning at a young age how to hunt and shoot.
This was a great opening for her to tell everyone about how she whacked Ted Nash, but she didn’t go there. Maybe she was saving this interesting story for when we met our CIA teammate, thinking that the retelling of it would be even more interesting to a CIA officer. But I’m sure everyone in the CIA already knew this story.
I used our bonding occasion to tell some funny cop stories, which made everyone laugh. But to show it wasn’t all fun and games on the NYPD, I mentioned getting shot on the job, and my medical retirement, and my rocky transition from NYPD to the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force, and of course, my first case, where I met Kate Mayfield, the love of my life.
Paul Brenner seemed to have had an interesting and adventurous life in the military, but like most combat veterans, he downplayed his war experiences, and again he didn’t mention his clandestine mission to post-war Vietnam. But he did say he’d had a brief wartime marriage, though he didn’t say anything about his current lady in the States, and I didn’t expect he would; he seemed to be a private person. Also-how do I put this? — he was smitten with Kate Mayfield. Hey, no big deal. I think Tom Walsh has the same problem. And it wasn’t my problem.
Anyway, four-fifths of the A-team got to know one another a little better, which might or might not make us work better together. And with luck, we’d all get home and have a few stories to tell. Or, in this business, not tell.
I suggested a reunion. “We’ll meet at seven under the clock at Grand Central Station, just like in the movies, and we’ll go to Michael Jordan’s Steak House.”
Everyone liked that happy ending and we agreed to be there, date to be determined by fate. I wondered who, if anyone, would make it.
Buck paid for dinner as promised-sixty bucks, including tip, wine, and drinks. That’s a month’s pay for a Yemeni, and about four drinks in a New York bar. Maybe I should buy a retirement house here.
Anyway, showing the poor judgment of the intoxicated, we thought it was a great idea to go to the Russia Club.
Zamo drove us the few hundred meters up the road to Tourist City. The half dozen guards at the gate appeared to be Eastern European, and they looked tough and menacing with their flak jackets and AK-47s. But they recognized the American Embassy Land Cruiser, and probably recognized Zamo, and waved us through.
I said to Brenner, “They seemed to know you.”
No response.
Tourist City was a collection of five- and six-story concrete slab buildings, not unlike an urban housing project for the poor. But here, in Sana’a, it was the height of luxury, and more importantly, it was guarded. Not safe. Guarded.
I could see why Paul Brenner might choose not to live here; it was sort of depressing, but also an admission that you felt unsafe on the outside. And macho men would never admit that. They’d rather die. And often did.
There were a few low-rise buildings on the grounds, including a few shops, and in one of the buildings was the Russia Club.
Zamo pulled up and we piled out.
There were two more armed guys in front of the place, and they definitely recognized Mr. Buckminster Harris. In fact, they greeted him in Russian, and Buck replied in Russian with what must have been a joke, because the two guys laughed.
Ironic, I thought, that Buck Harris, who’d spent most of his professional life trying to screw the Russians, was now yucking it up with them in Yemen, where he’d spent part of the Cold War spying on the now-defunct Evil Empire. If you live long enough, you see things you could never have imagined.
We entered the Russia Club, and the maitre d’ saw me and shouted, “Ivan! It is you! Excellent. Tatiana is here tonight. She will be delirious with joy!”
Just kidding.
But the maitre d’, Sergei by name, did know Buck, though not Paul Brenner, which disappointed me. I would have liked to discover that Mr. Cool dropped his paycheck here every month, boozing and whoring. Kate, too, would find that interesting.
Anyway, the place looked a bit sleazy, which it was. There was a long bar to the right, a raised stage, and a ceramic-tile dance floor surrounded by tables, half of which were empty. A DJ was playing some god-awful seventies hard rock, and a few couples were on the dance floor, looking like they were having seizures.
The bar was crowded with casually dressed men and barely dressed women. I mean, I haven’t seen so much deep cleavage since I drove through the Grand Canyon. The men looked Western-Europeans and Americans-and most of the ladies appeared to be from Eastern Europe and Russia, though there were a few black ladies who, I’d once been told, were from Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, which is not far from here if you cross the pirate-infested Red Sea. Also at the tables were a few Western-looking women accompanied by their gentlemen friends or husbands. I recognized two men and women from the embassy, but they didn’t wave.
If there were any Yemeni customers or service staff in the Russia Club, I didn’t see them. In fact, I’m sure one selling point of this place was the promise that you didn’t have to see a single Yemeni, unless you stayed until closing time and watched them mop the floor under the eye of armed Russians.
Kate broke into my thoughts and asked me, “Been here before?”
“They’ve named a cocktail after me.”
Anyway, Sergei escorted us to a table, though I’d have preferred the bar.
Buck ordered a bottle of Stolichnaya on ice, a plate of citrus fruit, and zakuskie-snacks.
My last case, involving The Lion, had taken me to a Russian nightclub in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, which is home to many Russian-Americans. The club, Svetlana by name, was a lot more opulent than this place, and the clientele were mostly immigrants from the motherland on a nostalgia trip. This place, named simply the Russia Club, was the Village of the Damned in the Country of the Lost.
Anyway, the vodka came quickly and we toasted, “Na Zdorov’e.”
Kate seemed comfortable enough in the proximity of horny guys and hookers, and her only complaint was the volume of the bad music.
Mr. Brenner asked her to dance, of course, and she accepted and walked unsteadily onto the slippery dance floor with Brenner holding her arm.
Buck said to me, “She’s a delightful woman.”
“She is,” I agreed. More so when she’s had a few. However, if it was me who’d suggested coming here, she might not be such delightful company.
Kate slipped on the tile floor, but Brenner caught her, and Kate kicked off her shoes and they danced to some horrid disco tune.
An attractive, scantily clad lady came over to the table carrying a tray suspended from a strap around her neck, and in the tray were two huge hooters and a selection of cigars and cigarettes. Take your pick.
Buck found three Cubans hiding under the lady’s left humidor, and gave her a twenty-dollar bill, which included tax, tip, and a light.
The lady said to Buck, in a heavy Russian accent, “I don’t see you for many weeks.”
Buck replied in Russian, and the lady laughed and tousled his thinning hair. Buck was apparently still fucking the Russians.
The lady checked me out and asked, “You are new in Sana’a?”
“I feel I’ve been here all my life.”
“Yes?” She further inquired, “Is that your wife or girlfriend? Or his?”
“My wife, his girlfriend.”
