An angel, maybe, Cochran thought, but one with a harpoon rather than a harp. - Tim Powers

Banach recalled that one defector had stated, I didn’t abandon the USSR, the USSR abandoned me.
And he recalled the oath he had taken, with perfect sincerity, at the age of eighteen: I will always be ready to come to the defense of my homeland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics…
The what? he thought now. What was that you said? The Roman Empire, was it? The Persian Empire, the Hittites?

He thought about crossing his fingers, but clasped her hand instead.

Finehouse relaxed in his own seat. They had all certainly failed.
But maybe sometimes, he thought, it’s a good thing, on the whole, to have closed a knife that someone else had opened.