REAL HOUSEWIVES OF THE CIA 147Scott and Amy were in Leningrad. One morning during training, Stacy
and I were in the middle of our preplanned surveillance detection route
(SDR) to ensure we were not being followed before committing a planned
operational act near Hogate’s, which was coincidentally one of our favorite
restaurants. Hogate’s was located on Maine Avenue in Southwest DC, near
what is now the DC Wharf. A tall, imposing, apparently homeless man in
a camouflage jacket approached us, acted as if he knew us, and tried to
sell us drugs. (I’d lived and worked in DC for years, and this was not an
uncommon occurrence.) We told him no thanks and tried to move past
him, at which point half a dozen federal security officers appeared out
of nowhere and converged on us, weapons drawn, shouting commands,
arresting us both. The “homeless” man also pulled a gun; he was in fact a
fellow officer. Curious passersby who witnessed our arrest got their jolt of
excitement for the day. Looking back, I’m just grateful smartphones and
YouTube had not yet been invented. Getting arrested with your wife by
half a dozen police is not the kind of thing you want your mother-in-law to
see on the local news while playing Ring around the Rosie with your one-
year-old at home.
The arresting officers cuffed us and put us into two separate unmarked
vehicles. Stacy did not look happy as they pushed her head down and
buckled her up in the back seat of a dark sedan. I was pretty sure this was
part of training, although I could not yet be sure, since we were in a semi-
seedy part of town and we were observed talking to a drug dealer. Cops
have been known to make mistakes. No one had warned us in advance that
this might happen during the course, and so I could only imagine what was
going through Stacy’s mind.
The officers took us to their office, where they searched my wallet and
her purse, and interrogated us in separate rooms. Having survived SERE
and law school, and knowing that I was innocent and in America after all,
I was almost enjoying the experience. That changed when they dialed the
number on my business card and informed some poor government secre-
tary that an employee named H. K. Roy had just been arrested for espio-
nage. (I made a mental “note to self ” to clean up that unfortunate mess
after I got out.) I wasn’t yet sure what was going on, so I told the officers I
wouldn’t say another word without a lawyer present. To be clear, that very
American legalistic approach would not have worked so well had I been