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later to say that the affair would be black tie.
    Jane Rogers was a sensible woman. She had attended a good private school and Mt. Holyoke College. She knew that when the ambassador’s wife calls in a post like Beirut, the world stops turning for a moment. So she did the sensible thing. She went out and bought a new evening dress, the fanciest she could find, from a designer on Hamra Street.
    “A preemptive strike,” said Rogers when Jane told him about the invitation.
    Rogers, who mistrusted ambassadors and their wives, resignedly took his tuxedo out of mothballs. He had bought it a decade earlier, when he graduated from the agency’s career training program, after a friend told him that a tuxedo was a must for a case officer overseas. Black-tie dinners were an ideal place to spot potential agents, the friend had advised.
    That struck Rogers as preposterous, but he bought the tuxedo anyway. It was a beautiful suit, with crisp, notched lapels and a fine silk lining. Rogers had barely worn it in the years since. Intelligence work, he had happily discovered, had very little to do with attending dinner parties.
     
     
    “You look smashing, my dear!” said Mrs. Wigg when she greeted them at the door. “Good for you!”
    Her tone was that of a girls’ school principal, commending a new girl who has just scored a goal in field hockey.
    “And Tom! How nice to meet you!”
    Mrs. Wigg batted her eyelashes as she greeted Rogers. They were dark and crusted with mascara. She leaned forward slightly as she shook his hand, revealing a good deal of her bosom in the decolletage of her evening dress.
    Rogers looked her squarely in the eye and thanked her for the kind invitation.
    Ambassador Wigg emerged from the bar to greet them, holding a dark highball in his hand. He had bushy eyebrows and a deep, resonant voice.
    “So glad you could come,” he said to Jane.
    “Welcome to the family, Tom,” he said to Rogers with a wink. “In our embassy, I like to think that we are all one family.”
    An ambassador who wants to be station chief, thought Rogers as he shook the ambassador’s hand.
    “Let me introduce you around,” said Ambassador Wigg, escorting them into a huge living room.
    “You know Phil Garrett, my deputy chief of mission, and his wife Bianca.” A flurry of handshakes.
    “And Roland Plateau, the French chargé, and his wife Dominique.” The Frenchman kissed Jane Rogers’s hand. His wife gave a flirtatious smile.
    “And I am pleased to present General Fadi Jezzine, the chief of the Deuxième Bureau of the Lebanese Army, and Madame Jezzine.” Nods and bows all around.
    “Mr. Rogers is our new political officer,” said the ambassador, his eyebrows vibrating now at a very rapid pace. Everyone around the room smiled knowingly.
    Rogers, who wasn’t eager to blow his cover the first month in Beirut, tried his best to look like a debonair member of the political section. He wished there was someone else from the station to lend moral support, but he was alone. Hoffman, it seemed, didn’t go to dinner parties.
    Rogers’s discomfort eased as he saw the French diplomat’s wife ambling toward him. She was an attractive woman, dark-haired and sensuous, her age difficult to determine but somewhere in the long march between thirty and fifty. Her dress was open in the back, revealing a deep tan that was the product of months of determined sunbathing.
    “Comme il fait beau aujourd’hui!” said Dominique Plateau, talking with very wide eyes about the weather. Yes, indeed, said Rogers. It was a beautiful day. He took a gin and tonic from a silver tray and decided to enjoy Beirut.
     
     
    When the introductions were done, Mrs. Wigg gathered Jane and Mrs. Garrett, the DCM’s wife, and led them to a corner of the room. They sat on a couch beneath a large painting, donated by a wealthy Lebanese American, which illustrated scenes from Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet .
    “Jane! What are your interests, my dear?” said the