The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story
The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story book cover

The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story

Hardcover – Deckle Edge, March 8, 2011

by
Price
$18.71
Format
Hardcover
Pages
320
Publisher
Crown
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0307588142
Dimensions
6.75 x 1 x 9.75 inches
Weight
1.24 pounds

Description

From Publishers Weekly Robert and Dayna Baer's initial meeting was slightly unusual—both were on a covert mission in Sarajevo for the CIA. In this intermittently intriguing memoir, they describe their careers in "the Company," their romance, and the difficulty they have in establishing a balanced life outside the world of secret agents. Their travels take them to interesting places in interesting times—from Bosnia and Lebanon during civil wars, to Syria under the Assads, the mansions of sheiks, and the safe houses of terrorist groups. As the Baers drift away from family and see friends die, they learn the costs of covert life. Told in chapters that alternate between each partner's perspective, their story is best when discussing the minutiae of agency work. In understated prose, the couple effectively narrate the long bouts of tedium interspersed with moments of paranoia and fear that make up a CIA agent's life. On most assignments, they never learn if their efforts have any positive result—often, they don't even know their co-workers' real names. When the personal becomes the subject, however, the understatement feels inadequate. The Baers give us so little insight into their mutual attraction that it feels like another state secret. After they leave the agency, they seem adrift, and the book loses focuses as well. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. From Booklist When they met in Croatia in the early 1990s, he didn’t know her real name. His alias was Howard, but he introduced himself as Bob. By that time, he was a seasoned CIA spook, with 15 years of international intrigue under his belt. Dayna, a relatively new field agent, was expecting that her new friend's veteran’s counsel would increase her quickly growing knowledge of the spy game; she wasn’t expecting to fall in love. This fascinating memoir, written by Bob and Dayna in alternating chapters, traces their lives from before they met—she was carrying out security checks in L.A.; he was in Tajikistan, scoping out the former Soviet republic—and follows them as they fell in love and began to build a life together. The book is full of insight into the world of international intelligence-gathering, and it contains some interesting surprises, too (at one point, after he resigned from the CIA, Bob came awfully close to taking a job in Kabul, working with the Taliban). An engaging narrative that should appeal to readers of spy-themed literature, factual or fictional. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Expect the publisher of this real-life spy and love story to take full advantage of the off-the-book-page human-interest angle. Comparisons to Mr. and Mrs. Smith and to Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson (and the recent biopic starring Sean Pean and Naomi Watts) won’t hurt a bit. --David Pitt "[A] bloody, suspenseful story of love and deceit.”-- Mens Journal “ The Company We Keep is a breezy, often fascinating account of this CIA romance, with tradecraft details and war stories thrown in to make it catnip for any fan of espionage fiction...That the Baers coaxed a happy ending out of all this is not the least remarkable part of their appealing story, and hats off to them."-- The Washington Post “Engrossing…filled with juicy, personal on-the-job details…[an] exhilarating tale of geopolitical love and peril...”-- More " The Company We Keep is the best true-life spy story I've ever read…You'll find yourself rooting for these two vagabond spies, and you won't want their exciting and moving story to end."--David Ignatius, New York Times bestselling author of Body of Lies "Funny, frightening, ironic, and deeply moving, this is an utterly engrossing thrill ride through the hall of mirrors that is modern espionage…A wonderful book."--Richard North Patterson, New York Times bestselling author of Degree of Guilt and In the Name of Honor "Provides a spot-on and compelling portrait of real life inside the CIA; the periods of boredom and frustration loudly punctuated by fast-moving and sometimes frightening, sometimes amusing intelligence operations.xa0 Bob and Dayna Baer are the real deal and they beautifully capture the murky world they lived and worked in for years."--Valerie Plame Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Game “Propulsive momentum…the authors give a good sense of the improvisational nature of the CIA…Both Baers write affectingly of their experiences.”-- Kirkus Reviews "A revelation…[shows] how spies operate in the field, the personal costs they pay for the exceptional lives they live, and the way fate can deliver up redemption…I loved this book."--Barry Eisler, New York Times bestselling author of Rain Fall and Fault Line "An emotionally candid memoir of a life few could imagine, juggling terrorists and dictators with all too real family dramas…describes how two accomplished spies trained in shooting for the heart, improbably found their own."--Jane Mayer, National Book Award Finalist for The Dark Side "After 20 years as the CIA's best and most adventurous spy,xa0Bobxa0Baerxa0has established himself as America's go-to writer on espionage and the Middle East in the age of 9/11. Now he and his wife Dayna have added a heart-stopping new chapter, revealing how a couple caught up in the dark world of CIA intrigue try to balance romance and gunplay while building a relationship on the jagged edge of undercover work… The Company We Keep will make you ask, who needs Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie?"--James Risen, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of State of War "A cross between John Le Carre and Erich Segal…Told with flair, intelligence and emotion – and often diary-like detail."--Leslie Stahl, CBS News"Extraordinary…shows the Baers’ ultimate triumph over the isolation inherent in their professions and the banality of bureaucracy worldwide."--Lindsay Moran, author of Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy "Will illuminate the dark world of intelligence gathering that very few people ever see. It's filled with ground truth, tradecraft and operational details...You will not be disappointed."--Fred Burton, VP Intelligence, STRATFOR, and author of Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent "A cross between voyeurism and adventure, this book takes us through the emotional, poignant, and often dangerous lives of two CIA operatives: the fear, the violence, the requisite suspicion, and the tenuous friendships…It’s especially intriguing to follow a woman into dark corners, thrilling missions, and psychologically difficult moments."--Rita Golden Gelman, author of Tales of a Female Nomad "Vivid and revealing…a look inside the real CIA."--David Wise, author of Spy ROBERT BAER is the author of three New York Times bestsellers involving the CIA: See No Evil (which was the basis for the acclaimed film “Syriana”), Sleeping with the Devil , and The Devil We Know . He has become one of the most authoritative voices on American intelligence and frequently appears as a media commentator. DAYNA BEAR, before leaving the agency to settle down with Bob, was herself an accomplished CIA operative. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • Robert Baer was known inside the CIA as perhaps the best operative working the Middle East. Over several decades he served everywhere from Iraq to New Delhi and racked up such an impressive list of accomplishments that he was eventually awarded the Career Intelligence Medal.  But if his career was everything a spy might aspire to, his personal life was a brutal illustration of everything a spy is asked to sacrifice. Bob had few enduring non-work friendships, only contacts and acquaintances. His prolonged absences destroyed his marriage, and he felt intense guilt at spending so little time with his children. Sworn to secrecy and constantly driven by ulterior motives, he was a man apart wherever he went. Dayna Williamson thought of herself as just an ordinary California girl -- admittedly one born into a comfortable lifestyle.  But she was always looking to get closer to the edge.  When she joined the CIA, she was initially tasked with Agency background checks, but the attractive Berkeley graduate quickly distinguished herself as someone who could thrive in the field, and she was eventually assigned to “Protective Operations” training where she learned to handle weapons and explosives and conduct high-speed escape and evasion. Tapped to serve in some of the world's most dangerous places, she discovered an inner strength and resourcefulness she'd never known -- but she also came to see that the spy life exacts a heavy toll.  Her marriage crumbled, her parents grew distant, and she lost touch with friends who'd once meant everything to her. When Bob and Dayna met on a mission in Sarajevo, it wasn't love at first sight. They were both too jaded for that. But there was something there, a spark. And as the danger escalated and their affection for each other grew, they realized it was time to leave “the Company,” to somehow rediscover the people they’d once been. As worldly as both were, the couple didn’t realize at first that turning in their Agency I.D. cards would
  • not
  • be enough to put their covert past behind.  The fact was, their clandestine relationships remained.  Living as “civilians” in conflict-ridden Beirut, they fielded assassination proposals, met with Arab sheiks, wily oil tycoons, terrorists, and assorted outlaws – and came perilously close to dying.  But even then they couldn’t know that their most formidable challenge lay ahead. Simultaneously a trip deep down the intelligence rabbit hole – one that shows how the “game” actually works, including the compromises it asks of those who play by its rules -- and a portrait of two people trying to regain a normal life,
  • The Company We Keep
  • is a masterly depiction of the
  • real
  • world of shadows.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(113)
★★★★
25%
(94)
★★★
15%
(56)
★★
7%
(26)
★
23%
(86)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Few mysteries are ever solved

If you like true-life spy stories, you'll probably like this book, but you'll also might find it thin gruel since it's not connected to big events and most of the story builds up to the writers leaving the CIA. They don't write about catching any bad guys or stopping terrorist attacks. Maybe they did that, but they just can't talk about it. They were as coy about it in their Fresh Air interview too.

The problem with any book from former members of the CIA is that they can't give you the real dirt, and even if the CIA doesn't censor the book (see the fight over [[ASIN:031260369X Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan -- and the Path to Victory]], for instance), the authors self-censor. I have no problem with that and I recognize that importance of it in the real world, but while reading the veneer of stories that any former-agent tells, I am constantly wanting to know more about what is going on, and I'm never satisfied. But, that's the genre. The book is short on operational details, and that extends even to the start of their personal relationship and Bob's seemingly sudden decision to leave the CIA, their divorces, and many of the other pivotal moments in the story. Even when they are out of the CIA, they can't let on too much about their lives. The book is mostly the highlights.

This book alternates between chapters by Bob and Dayna. For the first half of the book, their stories aren't connected. Bob is doing something in Central Asia, and Dayna is starting her career in the CIA protective services. Eventually there stories converge, and when they do the CIA portion is mostly over. Much of the book is matter-of-fact, as if everything has the same importance, or nothing is important. Just reading from the book, you'd think that one day he was in and the next day he wasn't. He doesn't go much into everything that led him to resign. He doesn't say much about thinking about "Riley", Dayna's codename, until one day he runs into her at Langley and asks her on a ski date in France. All of a sudden they are a couple. There's not much conflict or tension in their stories, like Mary Matalin and James Carville let go in their alternating chapters in [[ASIN:0684801337 All's Fair: Love, War and Running for President]]. The only thing they offer is that Dayna didn't like the car Bob first picked her up in and that Bob didn't know if they should get a third dog. There must be a lot more that we don't get to see. They do say that CIA couples have the advantage that they can at least talk to each other about work.

Dayna's story starts with her doing background checks, then being selected for the protective services. Bob's story starts with him already operating in Central Asia. There's not a lot of background, but Bob may have left most of his story to his earlier book, [[ASIN:140004684X See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism]]. Those are the details I find most interesting, but this isn't a memoir of their careers; it's the part of their careers where they overlap.

The most disappointing part of the book, however, is that the tidbits that these authors do let us see aren't really that important to the layperson. They aren't writing about super secret fieldcraft schools, they aren't writing about chasing bin Ladin or Carlos the Jackal, they aren't writing about stopping events that we've seen on the news, and they are in places where the bad things have already happened. The lure of the spy book is that we think they are doing those things even if they aren't telling us they are. Like the people they deal with after they leave the CIA, we want to believe in a cloak-and-dagger world of secret conspiracies and power that doesn't exist.

Bob starts the last paragraph in the book saying "Nothing I did in my years in the CIA added or subtracted from the mess out there". At the end of the most exciting event, where one of Bob's agents is shot, Dayna ends her part of story with "Another thing I think most people would be surprised about is that in espionage, few mysteries are ever solved" to explain that they never found out why the agent was attacked. Those two statements are the best summary of the book, no matter what the real story actually was.
30 people found this helpful
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not nice

If i knew the book was written by a female i would not have bought it. I simply don't like stories to be written by the eye of a female. The cover says "A Husband and Wife true life spy story" they (first) mention Robert Baer (New York times bestselling author) i don't know what part he wrote in this book but i am truly upset. I love spy stories, read a lot of mossad and british intelligent books but all written by males and they are so great.

I finished up to page 80 and am truly disappointed in the way they trick the buyer in believing Robert wrote the book.
5 people found this helpful
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ANOTHER GREAT BAER ADVENTURE INTO A DARK WORLD

This was more of a love story than a "spy story." It was easy to read---and sometimes a little boring while the two were "spying on a targeted house of the enemy." However, I never put a book down until I have read it from "Introduction" to the last page of an "epilogue." After "digesting" the story, I found myself looking for other books by Robert Baer. Yesterday, SEE NO EVIL arrived in the mail and I immediately plunged into the reading of the book. I saw the movie but always find the books more interesting than the films-----and this one is not disappointing me at all.
4 people found this helpful
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Not worth the time to read it.

Not worth the time to read this. It has been so sanitized that the couple's travel with no set agenda. No results of their missions are enumerated. Quite boring.
4 people found this helpful
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The Company They Keep

This is an easy, quick and light, romantic story of a U.S.spy couple working for the CIA. It isn't terribly "high drama" one would normally associate with the world of intrique, mayham and murder. James Bond it's not, nor should it be in the autobiographical tale of those two.

I think it's a book that over looks the real murky universe of what working under cover entails, and only a few hint are offered in the book when, for instance, one of the contacts' family in killed in an air attack. Then one can see the shock and shame of innocents' demise. Other than that it's the "good life" world capitols, fine wine, house hunting, family tensions, an adoption of an Asian infant, and a romantic overtone that's sentimental in outlook.

In all, it's a book to be read for entertainment but not information or knowledge.

ALM
3 people found this helpful
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A skimpy memoir that falls flat in the second half

This is one of those books that should have been far more fascinating than it was. What started as an intriguing look behind the scenes at the tradecraft of spying and the day-to-day life undercover ended up as a banal rehash of some of co-author Robert Baer's previous books and a rather dull post-CIA memoir.

I found Dayna Baer's contributions to this dual memoir (in which she and her husband alternated the writing) to be the more interesting, including her undercover surveillance operations in places like Greece and Sarajevo. There are also some probably unintentionally hilarious comments about how little an intelligence operative in the field can now about what is going on -- including, she writes, the fact that "you live on the faith that Washington knows what it is doing."

The book is lively and fast-paced, but when it was over I realized how skimpy it was. At the end of the day, it felt like a random assortment of observations, anecdotes, and opinions from two intelligence operatives. (I also ended up feeling unexpectedly sympathetic for Robert Baer's children, ex-wife, mother and former bosses, with all of whom, it seems, he has fallen out: it must be pretty hard to alienate a mother who can cope with Kalashnikovs and RPGs under your bed and who can charm prostitutes in a hotel bar in Tajikistan...)

Anyone looking for serious insight into the intelligence game won't find it in this memoir, and there are few details of the romance between the two either -- one day they are co-workers and the next they are off on holiday together. It's up to the reader to fill in the gaps.

I'd recommend borrowing this from the library, and then only if you're an espionage aficionado who can't find enough "true life" sagas to keep you happy. I was, at best, mildly interested by some of the early chapters, but by the time the Baers are trying to carve out a post-CIA life for themselves, I was wondering why I cared. That's one question I never found an answer to in its pages.
3 people found this helpful
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The True Lives of Spies

The Company We Keep is the true story of Bob and Dayna Baer, two agents in the CIA.

The first half of the book is comprised of twenty or so short stories/vignettes. Some are told from Bob's point of view, and some are told from Dana's - the subject matter covers everything from CIA training to family troubles to deep undercover missions in the Middle East. This section of the book is interesting, but can be a little tough to read. The stories jump all over the place, characters come and go constantly, the setting changes drastically, and the individual stories have very little continuity with each other. This section almost reads as if half of the chapters were cut out randomly, and the reader is left to peruse the remains. Some cool stories and insight into the daily lives of spies for sure, but a bit awkward to read.

At about the halfway point of this book, the tone changes significantly. Bob and Dayna meet on a mission in Bosnia and fall in love. They eventually give up their CIA lives and attempt to settle back down into the 'real world' together. The remnants of their former careers make this more difficult than it seems like it should be, and there are some interesting glimpses into how hard it is for an agent to leave the CIA life behind. Eventually Bob and Dayna manage to settle their lives down and work on starting a family, which is how this book closes out.

This book is a tough one to review, major section is very different from the others. The first half of the book is really interesting, but mostly I find myself thinking about what could have been. I don't know for sure, but I'd suspect that the disjointed style is mostly due to some sort of classified information filter and unfortunately the book is worse off because of it. Some of the stories are truly awesome (such as the time that our CIA heroes were forced to rent an apartment with an unexploded artillery shell stuck in the floor in order to spy on a nearby safehouse), but the all-over-the-place style and constantly changing point of view can make it difficult to focus in on these gems.

Honestly, I didn't find the fall-in-love section of this book to be very compelling. This love story was told in a way that was mostly business, and not very romantic. I never really found myself rooting for these two to get together, it was just sort of what happened next in the story.

If you're interested at all in finding out what the real (read: non-romanticized) day-to-day lives of undercover CIA agents is like, then The Company We Keep will likely keep you entertained (through the first half at least). If you're looking for a heart-wrenching tale of romance between undercover agents in a faraway land, I'd look elsewhere.
3 people found this helpful
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This book never engaged me.

This seemed to be an amalgam of how a woman became a combat-trained CIA operative--which was enjoyable--and a love story of how she then fell in love with a guy she used to consider a jerk--not so interesting. There was a lot of "hoo-boy" if you only knew what went on in that operation, without being able to tell us about it. And the love story seemed written in a really dull and not very self-explorartory way. It took me months to even want to bother to review it. Many better books out there, and such limited time for them...
2 people found this helpful
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It's hard on the family to be a spy

The Company We Keep by Robert and Dayna Baer is not your usual book about the CIA. There is little policy analysis or debate about the CIA's role in a free society. It is the story of Dayna and Robert who, as CIA operatives, met and fell in love. Robert was already a senior operative when Dayna joined the CIA, so despite the subtitle "a husband and wife true life spy story" Robert and Dayna were not, for the most part, Mr. and Mrs. James Bond.

Most chapters begin with a quote for a newspaper or government publication. These quotes help put the narrative in historical context. Without such introduction, the storyline would have been very haphazard. Even with these introductions, the storyline jumps a great deal. In most books, this would have been a fatal flaw, but neglecting to lead one chapter into the next, is not a critical short-coming in this work.

Also at the beginning of each chapter is a notation whether the chapter is authored by Robert or Dayna. The reader is advised to play close attention to whether Robert or Dayna is writing. Until halfway through the book, this reviewer did not. This lead to confusion, as the chapters do not always alternate between husband and wife.

Unlike the fictional James Bond, Robert and Dayna have family. He has children from a prior marriage. She has parents who missed their daughter as she traveled about the globe. Incidentally, Dayna shared some observations about her father that, if I had been her, I would have not made public.

More than anything else, The Company We Keep shows what a strain being a CIA operative puts on marriage and family. (Robert and Dayna's marriage survived because they decided to leave the CIA). It also shows how female operatives need to expect, and be comfortable with, spending extended periods of time, often in close quarters, with their male co-workers.

When I bought The Company We Keep, I was expecting more cloak and dagger, and less of Robert and I got an apartment in Beirut and then we moved to Colorado, etc. While unexpected, there is a happy family ending that is a wonderful story in itself.

While the human interest angle is important, the actual spying takes up no more than a third of the book. Therefore, the most I can give The Company is a slightly generous four star rating.
2 people found this helpful
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Interesting, but not what I expected (3.5 stars)

THE COMPANY WE KEEP was by no means a bad book, but I think my expectations were such that I was bound to be a little disappointed. I didn't really know what to expect, but an action, spy, historical/political, and love story - or some combination of the four - was what I had in mind when I started the book, and it ended up being relatively light on all four.

It's an interesting read and I liked how Dayna and Bob each wrote their separate (short) chapters, which are at first completely separate and then start to overlap more and more until they're intertwined and covering the same period and time together. Some pieces seem random and/or not fully explored, both things having to do with their personal lives (felt very piecemeal to me and really not complete) and with their professional ones. I think one thing the book brought home to me was that being in the CIA is not as exciting as it may seem in TV and movies (big shocker, I know!), and that nothing in that world is black and white.

I have a great deal of admiration for Dayna and Bob - their sense of adventure and ability to just pickup and go or be in completely unknown situations was really awe-inspiring to me, who likes to know everything beforehand, have all contingencies planned out, and is basically not the most spur-of-the-moment type person (putting it lightly).

BOTTOM LINE:
All in all, the book was quieter than I thought it would be, but worth the read.
[This review is of an advanced copy format of the book]
2 people found this helpful

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