LIFE UNDERCOVER by Amaryllis Fox

At twenty-two years old, Amaryllis Fox was recruited by the CIA.

While she was doing her master at Georgetown University, after she graduated from Oxford University, Amaryllis Fox developed an algorithm for predicting terrorist activity.

I was impressed to find out that after 6 months of tough training, Amaryllis graduated magna cum laude and became an unofficial cover.
On the one hand, it was a recognition of her extraordinary aptitudes. Still, on the other hand, that meant that if she ever was caught, the USA could not intervene to help her.

Funny fact for the movie lovers: the training camp was called “the Farm,” and it was “a simulated Truman Show set in a fictionalized country called the Republic of Vertania (ROV), where we are to undergo the most demanding espionage training on earth.” 

It was hard for Amaryllis to adapt to the real world after she quit the CIA. Spending years as an International art dealer while she was infiltrating the world of nuclear power providers from Europe and the Middle East, became more than a role play. Nobody besides herself, her husband and CIA knew what she was doing for real.

“I discover that becoming Real isn’t as simple as driving out through the Langley gates.
It isn’t only undercover spies who pretend. It’s everyone with a social media account, it turns out, or a lover or a boss.”

That is why I admired Amaryllis’ mother for helping her found herself in the real world.

“People pretend in the real world just as much as in the spy world, she says. 

They pretend because the stakes are the same–the stakes are not getting hurt. 

Problem is, she points out, the cost of the armor is the same, too. The insecurity that comes from building relationships on a lie, on a flickering projection of strength.

Whether it’s falling in love or starting a movement, talking with a worker or building up NATO, pretending makes us feel strong, she says, in relationships and geopolitics. 
It makes us feel safe. 
But pretending is a shoddy foundation for things like peace and power.”