For months, Howard trained in Virginia and Washington, learning “dead drops” and countersurveillance techniques, putting little pieces of film in tree stumps and not blinking. He learned terms like “wet assets” (Russian terminology for liquidated spies), “honey pots” (women used as sexual lures), and “ravens” (male homosexual lures). He learned of how the agency kept the names of its “live assets” in Moscow in separate black envelopes in a basement safe.
