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In my past life, I’d spent some time around embassies, studying their layouts, watching the activity nearby, occasionally slipping inside for a closer look. Visit Embassy Row in DC or Kensington Palace Gardens in London, and you’d find yourself immersed in a world of quiet wealth and privilege where loitering unnoticed was difficult. I’d had to get creative—dress up as a tourist with a different disguise every day, skulk around at night avoiding the watchful eyes of security cameras, that kind of thing… Once, I’d reinvented myself as a landscaper just to spend time in the area. Nobody questioned a woman with pruning shears.
The Russian Consulate Field Office in Huntington Beach presented a different set of challenges. It perched above the Big Break Surf Store, a stone’s throw fr
