The Genoa Handoff
A simple brush pass in Genoa went sideways the moment I picked up a tail I hadn't been looking for. Here is how I confirmed it, walked away clean, and put the meeting back together a day later — without ever letting them know I'd seen them.
Three Days in Marseille
Three days to learn a man's life, walk a route that makes followers show themselves, and tell the difference between a real team and a coincidence of the city. The answer mattered more than he wanted it to.
Mission BriefThe Trieste Crossing
An old border, a frightened source, and a folder of paper that couldn't travel as a record of itself. The Wall had fallen but the habits hadn't. Here is what patience buys you when the line on the map has gone soft but the men who used to guard it are still standing around with nothing to do.
Mission BriefThe Turin Ledger
An industrial firm in Turin was bleeding its secrets and wanted the leak found. The client imagined break-ins and bribed guards. The truth was quieter and more ordinary, and I found it the slow way — not by taking anything, but by getting people to give it. A field note on elicitation, and on the difference between theft and conversation.
Mission BriefA Quiet Week in Lisbon
A fixed post in Lisbon — one man, one window, one building to watch. This is the discipline nobody glamorises: the static surveillance, the war against your own boredom, and the single hour in a long dull week when everything you came for finally walked through the door.
How to Disappear in a City That Knows You
Going gray in a place that already has your face. Why the man who looks like a spy is the easiest one to remember, and what the cameras changed about all of it.
TradecraftThe Coffee Is Never Free
Information isn't taken by pressure. It's taken by rapport, by a kind face and a warm cup, by a conversation you enjoy and don't remember properly afterward. Here is how the friendly questioner works — and how to notice when it's you on the wrong side of the table.
TradecraftKnow Who's Actually Watching
A field guide to the five kinds of interest that find a person, and why the right response depends entirely on which one has found you. The amateur reacts the same way to all of them. That is the first mistake.
TradecraftThe Art of the Baseline
Thirty years of the trade, and if I could keep only one skill it would be this one. Everything else hangs from it. Read normal first, and the dangerous thing will come find you.
You Think You're Being Followed. Read This First.
The feeling of being watched is common and usually wrong. Here's how to find out which, without handing the answer to the people who'd most like to have it.
ScenarioThe Second Location
There is one rule I would keep if you forced me to throw the rest away. Do not let yourself be moved. Not to the van, not to the back room, not to "somewhere quieter." This is why, and this is what it costs you to refuse.
ScenarioSomeone Broke Into Your Home
You come home and something is wrong. Here is how to read the signs from the kerb, why you do not go in, and what actually buys you safety — none of which the alarm company will sell you.
ScenarioStopped by the Police Abroad
Being stopped by police in a country not your own is a negotiation you did not ask for. Stay calm, stay brief, understand whose authority you are actually under — and let the other person have the easy decision.
Dossier: The CIA
A field note on how the American service is actually built — officer and asset, station and safehouse, the cover that means immunity and the cover that means a foreign cell.
DossierDossier: The KGB and Its Children
From the Lubyanka to the FSB and the SVR — a field note on the service that fused intelligence with state muscle, and on the patience and deniability it never lost.
DossierDossier: The FBI
A field note on the American domestic engine — how a case is slowly assembled, what behavioural profiling actually does, and why patience is the whole method.
DossierDossier: MI6
A short field note on the Secret Intelligence Service — the clean template for the gentleman-spy, and the division of labour that keeps it in its lane.
What I Actually Carry
After thirty-five years the kit got smaller, not larger. The things that survived all earned it. The rest sat in a drawer, which is where most gear actually lives.
GearThe Go-Bag
The test of a go-bag is not what is in it. It is whether you can find it, lift it, and be gone before you are fully awake.
GearChoosing a Knife (and Why It's a Tool)
Everyone wants to talk about a knife as a weapon. I have used mine a thousand times for everything except that, which is exactly the point.
GearA Watch, Not a Phone
A good mechanical watch keeps time, points you north, and feeds nobody's database. Three reasons I still wear one when the young ones laugh.
Thirty-Five Years of Looking Over My Shoulder
A retired operative on what changed between 1990 and 2025 — the dead drop, the payphone, the lira, the face in the crowd — and what staying alert for thirty-five years quietly costs a man.
DispatchThe Year the Wall Came Down
The wall came down and a generation of men trained at public expense found themselves freelancing. I was one of them. Here is what that taught a young man about who you actually work for.
DispatchThe Euro Killed the Cash Meet
In 2002 the old currencies vanished into a single one, and a way of moving money quietly went with them. A note on what convenience costs the careful man.
DispatchThe Smartphone Ended the Craft
For thirty years the whole trade rested on being a face nobody could place later. Then the thing in your pocket started keeping the diary you used to keep in your head — and the diary never lies for you.