The foreign woman was attractive, well-dressed and confidently at ease.
She struck up a conversation in person with the former American soldier – at the time a senior defense contractor – answering his questions about the company she said she worked for and the job she claimed to do. By the end of the day, her interest had taken a sharper turn, her phone lighting up his with a stream of sexually suggestive text messages.
“What are you doing tonight?” read one. “Come for a drink," said another.
It was a trap.
One that has quietly played out for as long as nations have used intelligence services to pry state secrets from rivals, a tactic fueled by myth, dubious accounts and flights of imagination.
