All the Old Knives Read Online Free PDF Page B

been upset lately. Of course I’ve been upset, I tell him. I got married, I moved back to a country I hardly know anymore. My life is upside down. As I’m telling him this, he’s writing on his prescription pad, then he rips it off and hands me a prescription for Xanax. Just like that. They give out mood enhancers like they’re M&M’s.”
    â€œDo they work?”
    â€œOf course they work. I went off of them for both pregnancies, and those were the worst eighteen months of my life.”
    â€œThe worst ?”
    â€œI’m exaggerating. We do that here. We also use the word ‘love’ for things we’re only fond of. You have to get used to it.” She raises her glass and smiles a weary one. “Welcome to California. Don’t take any of us at face value.”
    â€œI’ll be sure to remember that,” I say, wondering if she’s forgotten how well we used to lie.

 
    8
    I met Celia in 2003, after I’d transferred to Vienna. She’d landed the previous year, following a successful stint in Dublin, and had requested Vienna because it was, as she put it, “the most civilized city on the Continent.” She would later change her mind about this, but the illusions of young operatives are easily forgiven.
    I came from the opposite direction, limping out of Moscow with the grinding memories of the Nord-Ost siege stuck in my head. Upwards of fifty Chechen Islamic militants took over the Dubrovka Theater in late October 2002 during a performance of Nord-Ost, a Russian version of Les Misérables. Holding eight hundred and fifty hostages, they demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya in order to end the war that had been going on for three years. After fifty-seven hours, the Russians pumped gas into the theater and went in. Nearly all the terrorists were killed, as were a hundred and twenty-nine hostages, most as a result of the gas and the decision, inexplicable to most, not to tell treating doctors precisely what the victims had inhaled.
    One American numbered among the dead—a forty-nine-year-old from Oklahoma City who’d come to meet his Russian fiancée—and in Washington and at the embassy we kept repeating his name, a kind of mantra as we joined the international condemnation of the Russian Special Forces, whose actions had led to so many unnecessary deaths. Vladimir Putin and his spokesmen raised their hands to quiet us all down and reminded us of the threat of international terrorism that, only the previous year, had felled two towers in Manhattan. Putin began sounding as much like our own president as he possibly could.
    The feeling in Washington was that Russia was making an excellent point, so we relaxed our stance. Not everyone in the embassy was happy with this. My station chief, George Lito, said, “Henry, you know what’s gonna happen now, don’t you? If we don’t raise a stink, then the Russians will dig deeper into Chechnya and keep shooting until the republic’s razed to the ground.” George was right: A decision to downsize Russian troops in Chechnya was quickly reversed, and a couple of weeks later new large-scale operations in Grozny and elsewhere were put into motion.
    But that didn’t stop us from assisting them. Under orders, we helped the FSB identify anti-Putin and pro-Chechen activists in the States, and more than once I sat down with agents to discuss dealings we’d had with Russian human rights organizations that questioned the official versions of events. Under direct orders from George, I even gave up a Chechen source, Ilyas Shishani, who had given us privileged access into Moscow’s closed Chechen community over the previous year. Soon afterward, Ilyas disappeared from the face of the earth.
    Around that time in Moscow, a couple of politicians joined with a handful of journalists and former FSB officers to investigate the Dubrovka Theater disaster. Their study