By JEFFERY DEAVER

Everett Collection

Secret agent man Sean Connery in ‘From Russia With Love’

One of
the greatest pleasures I get as a novelist is researching a field I
wasn’t previously familiar with, then incorporating the resulting
material into my novels.

For “Carte Blanche,” the newest James
Bond novel, I soaked up a number of fascinating factoids about
tradecraft—the subdued term for the techniques of espionage. My
knowledge will have faded in a few years, but in the short term, I’m a
bit of a spymaster. I thought I might share a few of the more useful
tricks of the trade, in case you find yourself tapped (recruited) by a
handler (the spy who supervises field agents) to help out the pros.

Apparently this happens quite frequently. At least according to Hollywood.

• To be a spy, you don’t need to break
into top-secret facilities, climb through air ducts and make your way
through laser beam fields. Yes, agents do some of that acrobatic stuff,
as well as sit in front of really neat high-def monitors, a la Jack
Bauer in “24,” while vacuuming up cellphone calls and emails. But a huge
amount of “product,” as intelligence is called, comes from open
sources, information available to everyone, found in newspapers, on TV,
in unclassified government, corporate and nonprofit reports and from
observations in public. You can be sure that somebody in Russia’s SVR,
one of the KGB’s successor agencies, is jotting down notes about this
article even as you read it.

For those who’ve always wanted the style and
skills of James Bond or one of the Bond girls, a “spy school” offers
classes in everything from hand-to-hand combat to deception detection.
WSJ’s Andy Jordan takes his camera to a session.

• Think you’re
being tailed? If you’re on foot in the city, never look behind you; the
agent will quickly hand off to another member of the surveillance team.
Find a commercial street with stores or restaurants whose entrances
have large, angled windows. They provide perfect mirrors to get a
glimpse of a tail. Take several random turns to verify that you’re the
target, but be sure to stop at several stores on your route and make
actual purchases to justify your complicated route and convince your
tail that you are oblivious to him.

What you do when you lead him into a dark alleyway is your own business.

• Are you the tailer rather than the
tailee? If you’re conducting surveillance or following somebody who is
frequently adopting disguises to throw you off, remember three
distinctive things about the target: height, proportion of shoulder
width to size of head and angle of foot (outward or inward pointing).
Even if the target changes clothes, makeup, hats, posture and hair
style, those three characteristics can’t be altered credibly or
consistently.

• If you need to disguise yourself,
remember that less is more. “Mission: Impossible” rubber masks and
prosthetics only work at considerable distance. For face-to-face
disguises, the most important trick is to use a dental apparatus to give
you bad teeth. The attention of the person you’re trying to fool will
automatically be drawn to your mouth, even if they try to maintain eye
contact.

Everett Collection

Daniel Craig in ‘Quantum of Solace’

• To
forge a subject’s signature—to, say, sign a document as part of a
misinformation assignment—copy it upside down. If you try to forge
handwriting without inverting it, your own script will affect the
results.

• Dead drops are locations where one
agent leaves an item, like classified documents or cash, for another to
retrieve later. Usually the objects are left in a CD, that is, a
concealment device. Outdoors, your best CDs are objects naturally found
on the ground and of little interest to passersby. They’re called
“sticks and bricks” because that’s often what they are: hollowed out
branches and fake stones. Freeze-dried dead animals are popular too.
Just make sure there’s no one around to wonder why you’re dropping a
dead rat into your attaché case.

• If you think your dead drop has been
compromised and is under surveillance, go on the offensive against the
enemy; try a Trojan Horse operation. Leave a double concealment device,
one with two hidden compartments, at the drop. The CD’s first
compartment, which can be opened, should contain a large sum of money or
secret documents (stolen from the enemy). In the second chamber, which
can’t be opened, put a tracker or listening device. Once the enemy
agents take it back to their safe house, it’s sure to be scanned for
radio or data transmissions; make sure the unit has timing software so
that it will not start sending signals for two or three days.

Everett Collection

Marceline Day in ‘Detectives,’ 1928.

• A good
way to get a listening device into the home of a target is to adopt an
NOC (non-official cover) as a salesman—of household items, for instance.
Follow the target’s spouse to the grocery store and gently ding his or
her car with your own. Apologize profusely and say that you’d prefer not
to report the accident to your insurance company. Give the spouse much
more money than it would cost to fix the damage (cash is too suspicious;
use a check from an account set up under your NOC). Then further make
nice by giving away one of your samples, like an expensive salt and
pepper set, which will, of course, have a transmitter inside—again,
timed for delayed transmission.

• If you’re concerned that someone is
tapping your mobile or land line, you can always come up with a
prearranged vocabulary of code words to convey messages in the course of
what seems to be an innocent conversation. Or use silent calling, in
which a certain interval of silence between pick-up and hang-up conveys a
message. Five seconds means to do X, 10 seconds is Y, etc.

• Who hasn’t spent sleepless nights
worried about double agents? Moles have existed since the profession of
espionage began. Motivation is the prime criterion in deciding if
someone spying for you is legitimate. Apply the MICE test: Is he working
for you because of the Money, out of Ideology, because he’s being
Coerced or because of his Ego? If he doesn’t score high on any of those
measures, he could be a double.

• If you’re a spy, you have to
communicate, sharing with your handler both operational information and
the product you’ve gathered. Most spies avoid public meetings, and
instead use covert communications (covcom) or clandestine communications
(clancom) to swap information.

Covcom occurs when the message itself
is detectable (though possibly encrypted), but the sender and recipient
are unknown. Classic techniques include using anonymous email accounts
and broadcasting information via radio. Clancom is when the message
itself is hidden. Steganography is the art of hiding information, and
the practice is thousands of years old. In the mid-20th century
microdots were the preferred form of steganography, and spy agencies’
technical services departments vied to outdo their opponents in making
the messages smaller and smaller.

Today spies use computer
steganography, in which the binary codes of photos, videos or music are
modified to contain digital messages. To the naked eye and ear, these
seem to be just any other digital media. But after being downloaded by
the recipient, they can be quickly processed by special software, and
the message extracted.

You might have noticed that I’ve
neglected to offer any insight into one particular aspect of espionage.
In reality, spies rarely assassinate anyone. Accordingly, and for the
sake of personal liability, I thought I’d avoid helpful hints I’ve
learned about targeted killings. If you really need some help in that
department, the best I’ll offer is that drone strikes seem to work
pretty well.

—Mr. Deaver is the author of 27 novels. “Carte Blanche” is due out June 14.