Jonna Mendez

He wanted me to know that I was seen, that he saw me.

I haven't mentioned that he was flanked by two really big, what would you call them?

They weren't soldiers.

They were Pashtuns, I think, and they had Kalashnikovs, long guns.

Imagine a Hyatt Hotel lobby.

with a little man in a shawl or a kameez and two guards with long guns.

No one in that hotel was walking up to this man and saying, excuse me, sir, could you put the guns down?

Everyone was scared of this guy.

He's looking at me.

I'm frozen.

And all I could think was, this is possibly, this is it.

They will possibly kill me.

It will mean nothing to them.

And I found myself hoping

that if they killed me, that I would be made a star in the CIA's lobby.

We have a whole wall.

We have a wall of stars, and every star represents a CIA officer that's been killed overseas, usually undercover, in the line of duty, in a foreign country.

And I thought, oh my God, that's how you end up on the wall.

I briefly wondered what my insurance company would say, learning that I had been killed in alias.

I wasn't sure, you know, in a false name.