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requested Mexico several times and insisted no one would recognize him there. But the psychologist had suggested that he needed an extended time in the States to reacclimate, and for a smooth reentry. Marshall felt as though he were living somebody else’s life. He missed his missions for Raul, their morning meetings, their nightly brandies, and a last cigar while they recapped the day. Although he knew what he had been doing there and why, they had become friends. However much he hated Raul now for what he’d done to Paloma and their baby, Marshall missed their camaraderie, and the intelligent conversations and decisions shared, just as he ached for the exquisite beauty of Paloma, and everything he had known with her. It was a lost world for him, with nothing to replace it in the States. He felt like he had been sucked into a vacuum and was hanging in space between two worlds.
    By May, it was hard for Marshall to believe he had only been back for three months. It felt like three years, and he couldn’t imagine another nine months with a desk job at the DEA, let alone a lifetime of it, if they never sent him back to the field. By June, he was putting serious pressure on them to reassign him anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world, where the drug activities would put his experience to use and challenge him again. What he wanted more than anything was to work undercover and get out of the Pentagon.
    By September, after a long, hot, dreary summer in Washington, he had spent every weekend in his apartment, and he felt like he was going insane. He requested a meeting with Bill Carter, and asked him if they were really planning to keep him in Washington for a full year before reassigning him. He felt he was being punished for doing too good a job undercover in Colombia and getting so deeply involved, which had been essential to the success of his mission there. He had already been punished enough by Raul.
    “Why don’t you sit back and enjoy it while you’re here?” Bill Carter responded. “There are a lot of things to do in Washington. You haven’t taken any vacation time. Isn’t there somewhere you want to go?” he asked pleasantly, as Marshall looked at him intently.
    “Yes. Anywhere in Central or South America. Back to work. I have nothing to do here.” Bill had noticed and heard from others that Marshall had made no friends since he’d returned. He considered it a temporary assignment. He was a perfect chameleon when undercover, but had no idea how to be himself anymore. The only “himself” he knew was the right-hand man of one of the biggest drug dealers in South America. Being Special Agent Marshall Everett was now totally foreign to him. He had let his hair grow back to a buzz cut after he shaved it when he left Bogotá. Beards were discouraged at the Pentagon. He didn’t even recognize the man he saw when he looked in the mirror without his long hair and beard, and his military surplus wardrobe.
    He felt like he was living a lie every day, coming to work at a job he hated, with people he didn’t care about or even want to know. What did he have in common with them? The men like him were all out in the field doing what he wanted to do, trying to break the chain of command and interrupt the activities of drug cartels. That at least seemed like important work. He was wasting his time at the desk job he’d been given, and even his superiors had to admit that his finely honed skills weren’t being used.
    “Let’s see where you are by the end of the year,” Bill Carter said, trying to fob him off, but he had no foreign undercover assignment in mind for him for the moment. They didn’t want him going back to wreak vengeance of a personal nature. He had to maintain a cool head and neutral point of view at all times. Bill wasn’t fully convinced Marshall was capable of that anymore. He had lost too much and paid too high a price for the work that he loved. He wasn’t objective, and wanted to engage in a