EXFIL by Anthony Patton (best book reader txt) 📕

typical Western approach, and Beth assessed that we had a lot of work ahead of us if we were to have any chance of gaining traction. The important point was to not take it personally, but any information about Chinese military activities in Pakistan would be well received.

I wasn’t surprised when a CIA officer named Brett Phelps casually approached Captain Li later the same evening, probably after witnessing my attempt. They seemed to hit it off. I could see it in Captain Li’s smiles, his nods, and his shrinking personal space. As someone who supposedly had the gift, I could see that Brett had it, too, and he also had the advantage of operating in the clandestine world.

The ethos of the Intelligence Community was that when the CIA boys stepped in, it was time to step aside. Needless to say, I wasn’t pleased that CIA was poaching my mark, but I didn’t want to interfere because the most important thing was a victory for the good guys.

Anyway, to my odd satisfaction, Brett told me later that his relationship with Captain Li failed to launch as well, which showed that all the training in the world couldn’t convince a target to cross a line. Captain Li would one day become Lieutenant Colonel Li, the most lethal cyber-spy in the world: enemy number one for the United States.

My rookie assignment in Islamabad was a success—my source cultivation and reporting numbers were “unprecedented”—and this was followed by a number of other assignments at overseas embassies as I worked my way up the ranks.

I understood that a military attaché career would limit my promotion potential and I was given opportunities to return to the infantry to check all the right boxes. However, by this time, I identified as a military attaché and couldn’t see myself returning to the regular army.

At one point in the journey, CIA offered me an opportunity to join the “dark side,” as we called it. Turned out they had an Office of Military Affairs that was always in the market for new talent. However intrigued I was, the status and respect that went with being a military attaché motivated me to decline, which, looking back, might have been a mistake. But as long as I was still in the Army, Beth had godfathers who could work behind the scenes to facilitate her Ph.D. program and lay the groundwork for a tenure-track professorship at West Point.

I recognized that my assignment to Bangkok would be my military attaché swan song, a fact difficult to accept because although I had hoped to be selected as the Senior Defense Official/Defense Attaché (SDO/DATT), I was selected to as the Army Attaché instead. Most officers would be satisfied to serve in the position, but Beth struggled with what felt like a demotion. Given the size of the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, one of the largest in Southeast Asia, the ambassador often had to limit event invitations to the Defense Attaché and his wife, which meant the arc of my career had peaked.

It was apparent that Beth struggled with playing second fiddle to a couple with no previous military attaché experience. We spent several uncomfortable nights at home after I explained that her role as the informal leader of the officers’ wives’ club didn’t give us real status in the diplomatic hierarchy.

I could tell that this pained her, which was why we focused on preparing for my promotion to brigadier general. The Commandant of Cadets position at West Point might be available at the end of my assignment. There were no guarantees, but Beth was working the issue behind the scenes and seemed confident about our chances. Leading up to the promotion announcement, she took steps—too many steps, I might say—to plan a promotion party, which only made my non-selection and the selection of the Defense Attaché all the more painful.

I would later learn that my non-selection had been due in part to a backlog of officers eligible for promotion. My below-the-zone promotion to major had put me in the mix with more experienced officers. The promotion panel said I would have an excellent chance the next year, but you’re only as good as your latest book, and the judges rotated each year.

When I spoke with Beth about the option of extending for a third year (West Point wouldn’t allow a colonel to fill a brigadier general position) she seemed pragmatically indifferent. Turns out she had arranged for me to take a colonel-level teaching position, without consulting me first.

Her tenured professorship was on track now and she was in the final stages of writing a book, so it wasn’t clear to her or anyone else why I would want to delay the move for a promotion that might never happen. Several West Point classmates told me that teaching cadets was a blast; that molding the minds of the next generation of Army officers was a meaningful experience. I never considered teaching a proper use of my talents and it wasn’t something to which I had ever aspired. But as much as I longed for the promotion, I couldn’t deny her this opportunity, until a sequence of events unfolded in Bangkok that resulted in my extending for a third year and Beth moving to West Point with our boys.

THREE

Many countries have red-light districts designed for men to indulge their baser impulses—drinking, gambling, sex, etc. Of course, women like to let off steam, too, but in different ways and for different reasons. In the United States, Las Vegas serves this purpose.

The debauchery displayed there is usually offset by how infrequently people indulge or how they behave after they return home.

Most people do have boundaries, however—what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas—and would look askance at anyone admitting to weekly Las Vegas binge sessions.

In other countries, especially developing ones, behavior such as prostitution, mistress culture, and a general lack of constraint vis-à-vis the rule of law, traffic laws, and closing hours for bars is more tolerated,