Status Updates From The Poet's Game: An Alex Ma...

‘You’re looking at Dulles,’ Linton said, nodding at the portrait. He cleaned his glasses with the silk lining of his tie, leaving his red eyes baked and unfocused. ‘I’ve heard all the stories: slippers for his gout, his philandering, his dislike of Hoover. He tried to make spying a scientific business with Gottlieb’s horrific LSD experiments but, above all, he understood that our job is to protect America

Someone on your side is working to have me caught. Many things have changed in Russia but one hasn’t. Traitors are taken to a basement cell in Lefortovo, made to kneel, a bullet fired into the base of the head. Brezhnev abolished the death penalty, so now there are only prison “suicides.” Viktoria won’t know what happened to me until a death notice appears in the mailbox. I’ll be buried in an unmarked grave

‘It’s not a pretty sight when a politician loses power. He wilts, crumbles, and clings to the vestiges of office. He mourns his vanished perks and entourage. He doesn’t accept that his day in the sun is over. One moment he’s on the world stage and the next he’s a bit player doing regional theatre. It’s terrible to see. Some men go gracefully. Some do whatever it takes to stay.’