EXFIL by Anthony Patton (best book reader txt) 📕

to West Point tonight to visit the family and interview for jobs.”

“Well, I’m sure Beth will be thrilled to have you back,” Brett said. “Good luck with the brigadier general promotion—coming up soon, right?”

“Yes, thanks,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting to happen, but Brett and Nguyen were oblivious to the previous night’s events. “Fingers crossed.”

Brett slid a piece of paper my way, bearing a handwritten list. “For the next meeting, we compiled a list of questions. If he’s willing to answer these, we’ll know he’s the real deal.”

I perused the questions—mostly technical jargon.

“After the successful operation, do we still doubt whether he’s the real deal?”

Nguyen nodded to suggest I had a good point. “We don’t know what the Chinese would be willing to give up for a controlled operation. In this case, they used a commercial off-the-shelf tool, which wasn’t consistent with previous attacks. These questions address their most guarded secrets, things we know they would never willingly reveal.”

Even the best Intelligence Officers were blinded by their own success. Of course we had to continue vetting Jade Envy to verify that he was working for us, not against us.

“Just curious, but is he still under surveillance?” I queried.

“We thought it was prudent to keep him under 24-hour surveillance after the recruitment,” Nguyen said and shifted in his chair. “Why do you ask?”

Brett leaned back, with a glance at Nguyen.

“Nothing,” I said. “I was curious whether there’s been any unusual activity since the recruitment.” Neither responded. “Why, what’s going on?”

“The surveillance team assigned to Jade Envy called about an hour ago to say they lost him,” Nguyen said. “He was running errands, but the team lost him at a strip mall near a Metro stop.”

“Was he evading surveillance or did they lose him?” I asked, knowing full well that shifting from vehicle to metro was a great way to lose surveillance.

“Well, he’s a professional,” Nguyen said. “So, we keep the surveillance team a safe distance away to avoid detection.”

“Surveillance teams never admit to making a mistake,” Brett added, raising a scenario the FBI would want to ignore. “You can discuss it with him during the next meeting.”

“Is this the first time they lost him?” I asked.

Both nodded. Our best surveillance teams rarely made mistakes, which meant we often over-analyzed the unavoidable few mistakes to reach the wrong conclusion. In this case, Jade Envy probably had taken steps to ensure that the surveillance teams didn’t lose him during his day-to-day business, to make his deliberate escapes seem like bad luck.

I couldn’t rule out the possibility of a misunderstanding and called Anna at work.

If the person asked who I was, I could say I was calling about her security clearance. I didn’t anticipate any issues, but mental preparation was the key to success—aim first, then shoot. But I was concerned to hear that Anna no longer worked at the J6. It wasn’t clear whether she’d had an annual contract, a month-to-month contract, or a voluntary separation. It would’ve been unusual to ask too many questions, but it made me wonder why she hadn’t told me.

If she had answered the phone in her cheery voice, unaware that Judy had drugged me, all would have been well. Instead, all the wrong pieces were rapidly falling into place, forming an ugly jigsaw puzzle, the picture of which I’d rather not have uncovered. Given the complexity and subtlety of intelligence, two or three relevant points were often sufficient to confirm a theory, if you possessed the ability to work at a high level of abstraction to fill in the gaps.

My next stop was Anna’s condominium.

After all, it was possible that her contract simply had ended and she was transferring to a new gig, which might result in a few days at home during the transition.

I found myself in unfamiliar territory.

Being honest with myself, I had no idea what was going on.

In the surveillance game, the Intelligence Officer was the rabbit, the person being followed by the surveillance team, and detecting surveillance was easy.

On the other hand, detecting surveillance without tipping your hand that you were trying to detect surveillance wasn’t easy. Intelligence Officers rarely conducted surveillance themselves, but it was where I found myself this day, parked outside of Anna’s condo.

It didn’t take long to realize that I could never work on a surveillance team.

Catching a spy in the act would get the blood pumping, but the unavoidable countless hours sitting in parked cars or following targets during their routine activity—home to work, work to home, visiting the park with the kids, etc.—would drive me insane.

I glimpsed Anna in her condo window as I flipped through a newspaper with oblivious pedestrians walking by.

She was wearing running clothes and talking on the phone with a smile. The most important observation was seeing the call end, which prompted me to start the car and focus on the ramp leading to the underground parking garage. I imagined Anna locking the door, taking the elevator down to the garage, walking to her car, and exiting the parking lot.

On cue, she departed in a red Volkswagen Passat, looked both ways, and turned left when the coast was clear. I put my car in drive and began my pursuit as my heart raced.

As a military attaché, I wasn’t trained to conduct surveillance detection like my colleagues in the clandestine world, but I understood the concept and realized that I had one advantage on my side: I was following a potential source, not a trained Intelligence Officer like Jade Envy, who would spot me in short order.

It probably wasn’t a coincidence that the FBI surveillance team lost Jade Envy on this day, or that Jade Envy lost them.

I followed Anna down I-66 toward D.C., crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and continued toward Glover Archbold Park, where she parked and stretched by the side of the road before starting her jog. Following her along the trail wasn’t an option, so I drove residential roads to parallel the trail the best