CIA Agents find eachother in retirement

 Decades after duty in the OSS and CIA, “spy girls” find each other in retirement

       To her, it looked like a harmless piece of coal, about the size of her fist. She remembers passing it to a Chinese secret agent. She remembers later learning about the train, the bridge, the explosion. Sometimes she thinks she has suppressed many wartime memories, but even after almost 70 years, they can creep back.
Betty McIntosh, 96, says that is part of being a spy: the doubts about whether you did the right thing, and hearing about those who died because of what you did, and whether you had alternatives. But it was a war.

Her friend Doris Bohrer would understand, but even so, McIntosh still hasn’t divulged everything about every World War II mission. Even though it turns out that Bohrer, 88, was an operative in the war, too: OSS, then CIA, just like McIntosh.
To most other residents of the retirement community in Northern Virginia, these two elegant, well-coiffed widows, Betty and Doris to everyone, are just part of the anonymous parade of aged men and women who play mixed bridge and talk about the brand-new heart and vascular center down the road, the day’s menu at the dining hall, and their pets.
What a curious resolution to it all: that although their paths never crossed during their undercover careers, McIntosh and Bohrer would find each other here, neighbors on the same street in the Westminster at Lake Ridge seniors village in Prince William County. Two women who wear the wedding rings of their dead husbands. Two women who laugh like girls when they reminisce, who are nearly inseparable.
McIntosh says she calls Bohrer almost every morning, just to make sure she’s still alive. Bohrer, for her part, can still drive and runs errands for her friend, who is, after all, eight years older and finds it less easy to get around.
“How’s it doing today, Betty?” Bohrer asks one recent weekday, stepping inside McIntosh’s living room, where paintings by a Japanese prisoner of war hang on the wall. Bohrer was bringing some medication for McIntosh, who had just had two teeth pulled.
“You’ve got the temperature setting in here at ‘off.’ You need it on ‘cool,’ ” Bohrer instructs McIntosh. “I’ve done that. Easy to do.” She adjusts the thermostat.

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