Our man, in his fifties and dressed in civilian clothes, sits sipping a Thai whisky on the rocks in a Burmese restaurant in a small town bordering western Thailand, with his aide-de-camp at his side. The younger man pours his boss another glass before taking a few bites of a local chili dish waiters have just brought to the table.
The shadow spymaster, whose name we cannot reveal for obvious reasons, does not naturally fit the description of a general or indeed of a spy chief. His trajectory, rather,
