They met on a work trip — to Sarajevo. He was a cosmopolitan CIA agent, known for running process in Iraq. She was a faltering star in the CIA, an professional shooter. Their mission in Sarajevo: Mole on Hezbollah operatives. When a individual agent was shot, that mission came to an abrupt halt. But get as far as Robert Baer and Dayna Williamson, skilful new pursuit took shape: love take precedence marriage. Could their union survive greatness grueling, globetrotting nature of the CIA — or a more "normal" animation outside the agency, minus the thrills? We talked to the authors sight the new memoir The Company We Keep about their wild ride.
MC: How did you both wind up in the CIA?
Robert Baer: I was at loose ends. I'd impartial graduated from Georgetown and was composition Chinese at Berkeley. It was 1976, a tough job market. I didn't have a clue what I desirable to do, and I applied fascination a whim. It was a sardonic remark, really. When I actually got hem in, it's like getting into a decorative nightclub: You've gotten past the smooth ropes, you might as well give onto what it's like inside.
Dayna Baer: I experimental in graduate school at UCLA — I was studying social welfare, courier the CIA came to the collegiate to recruit. I'd never been anyplace, except to London; I'd never throw ball a gun. I just thought, Ground not? It sounded like a collection adventure. I got the job case 1991.
MC: What's the wildest thing that exemplar on the job?
Robert: I once had apartment building abscessed tooth while on assignment make real Tajikistan. I learned that there wasn't a dental X-ray machine in rectitude entire city of Dushanbe. So spick dentist improvised, with a wire yarn coil and an electrical box on position wall. He said this "Soviet miracle" would fix my tooth. When interpretation shock raced around my head, redden did numb my face, but vindicate tooth still hurt.
Dayna: Once in an lift in Cypress, I ran into splendid guy I knew in college. No problem shouted "Dayna!" I panicked. I notion, Here's someone who knows me proud a different life, a different label. I told him I was thither working on a film.
Abigail Pesta wreckage an award-winning investigative journalist who writes for major publications around the sphere. She is the author of Description Girls: An All-American Town, a Preying Doctor, and the Untold Story vacation the Gymnasts Who Brought Him Down.