When I started that mission, two other operators had just been recruited. We were three. The brief was simple: build access, get close and deliver results.
Within months, the other two were frustrated:
"It's too slow, this isn't what I signed up for. Where's the action?"
They wanted the adrenaline. They wanted to feel the mission, like in spy movies.
Two years later, only one operator remained on this mission: me.
For two years, nothing visible happened but I worked hard.
I had to get to a specific high-end target. To do so, the strategy we built was long-term. We will not move toward the final target. We will make sure the target would, one day, need to move toward me.
That's a huge difference.
This required, of course, studying and observing the target in depth. During these two years, I focused on building a high-trust network that would eventually lead the target to me - a functional network of people I could activate, read, and rely on under pressure.
During these two years I built an environment: a deep cover, real business, real clients. All of this to serve my goal.
In HUMINT, this is the real asset: the ability to build and handle networks of sources. This is slow work, it requires psychological precision, consistency, and long-term positioning.
I cannot say it was exciting in the way people imagine "spying" to be. There is no adrenaline in it. Just calibration, observation, and building rapport over time. But once a strong network is established, it changes the geometry of access completely.
During these two years, I penetrated the third circle around the target, then the second, then the first.
Two years later, the target called... me!
His ecosystem had absorbed my presence, I knew it was only a "matter of time".
I could tell you that from that day the real work began, but that would be a lie. These years were foundational to what came next.
2 years... it's long for a culture that worships acceleration. But this belief is catastrophic in serious strategy. Two years is insignificant in generational wealth. Insignificant in geopolitical repositioning.
But it is indeed long for a nervous system conditioned to expect feedback.
The 20-minute transaction
After these two years, things accelerated naturally. I was finally invited into the right rooms.
Those rooms had existed long before I arrived. The ecosystem I stepped into had been forming for over a decade.
One afternoon, I witnessed what strategic patience looks like when multiple timelines converge: around a small table, on thick leather sofas, with a spiced coffee, four men were talking.
They were not meeting for the first time. Their relationship had been evolving: partnership attempts that did not materialize, short periods of distance, quiet rivalries, shared risks, moments of tension that tested loyalty.
Nearly a decade of mutual calibration.
I had only been present for this tiny chapter of their history: a nod, a handshake, and a signature on a napkin. And just like this, one of the most expensive private jets on the market changed hands.
The visible decision took twenty minutes. The structural decision had taken years.
Trust had been accumulated.
Reputation had been verified.
Thresholds had been tested.
My two little years of positioning intersected with their decade of relational architecture.
Strategic patience and non-linear time
Most people think decisions are made in "the moment". They're not.