Confessions of a Sleeper Agent

Just after we'd settled in the small rural village (pop. 2600) in which we now reside, the rumors began flying. The first, predictable, one was, "He's a CIA agent working undercover." That one got some traction and for years I've found imaginative ways to shoot it down. Forget about why the CIA would plunk one of its "agents" in Toad Stool Hollow, USA. I took particular delight, however, in the second rumor: "They're in the FBI's witness protection program." I relished the notoriety I got from this rumor. But how many Ivy League-educated introverts of farmer stock get mistaken for mafiosi? I didn't care. I went out of my way to stoke this rumor, including trying to affect a Brooklyn accent and a facial twitch. Why the rumors? Because the American hinterland simply has a hard time processing "he's an American diplomat-turned-writer with a Dutch wife whose kids were born in South Africa and who are all multilingual."

Over dinner the other day, I told my wife, "You know, I feel like one of those Russian sleeper agents." She expressed puzzlement. "Yeah," I said. "I live an identity that isn't my own, participate in a way of life that doesn't come naturally and must affect a down-home patter whenever I mingle with the locals." As with most of my off-the-cuff commentary, she dismissed it as crazy talk. That's why I didn't continue with comparing us with the old Saturday Night Live tv comedy Conehead family, outer space aliens stranded in American suburbia after their spaceship had crashed on earth.

 But, continuing with the "illegals" formula, let's look at some examples. Days after moving in, I stopped in my tracks while walking down Main St. and began laughing like a mad man. Why? A sign in a hair salon window proclaimed, "Walk-ins Welcome!" In my world, "walk-ins" were defectors who appeared unannounced at an embassy requesting political asylum. During my strolls or while driving, I found myself inadvertently conducting surveillance detection runs. I stopped at storefront windows to view reflections of a possible "tail" and double tracked, memorizing faces, again, to detect a tail. One eye was always in the rearview mirror. My phone conversations were guarded and terse, used as I was to electronic bugging. I turned the radio up loud when conducting private conversations. My trained ear would try to discern AK rounds in holiday fireworks. I applied my kremlinology skills in analyzing local power structures. Big mistake. The mayor is not an appointed apparatchik and you cannot consider PTA members as conniving politburo aspirants each with his or her own power base. The village court is not rigged and dialectical materialism is worth less than the grocery list. No, the Girl Scouts are not a front organization; it's okay for your daughters to join. The school board does not conduct purges. Not usually anyway.

At social get-togethers, in response to the inevitable question, "So what do you do?" I respond, "I'm a writer. I worked previously for the U.S. State Department." "Ah. State Department, huh? So, how long did you live in Albany?" Then the rumors begin. "Psst. They're like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in that movie, Mr. & Mrs. Smith"). Of course, what can you expect when you're called out of the blue by a State Department bureaucrat coolly advising you to pack your bags for return to active duty to Afghanistan? Or, the fact that you write bestselling spy novels that must be security reviewed by government censors? Or, that you tool around in a '72 U.S. Army jeep you brought back from Vietnam? These are not exactly the quotidian activities of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. Having spent the bulk of my government career in or tracking communist regimes, guerrilla movements, puppet states, satrapies, dictatorships and the byzantine U.S. foreign affairs bureaucracy has left me a twisted soul, largely out of touch with my own society, a sleeper agent in my adopted home town. Excuse me. My handlers are expecting me at a dead drop location and some State Department functionary is calling…