This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production.

Hi, I'm John Kiroki, and welcome to Dead Drop.

What Makes a Spy Tick?

This is another episode in the series, What Makes This Spy Tick?

Before we get down to it though, I want

to thank you. That's a very, very big thank you. Seriously, for listening to this story. As I record

this, we just got a surge of new listeners. I'm glad you're here. Your likes, your kind reviews,

ratings, and recommendations have all helped more and more people find us, and I'm really deeply appreciative.

I'd say we were doing this on a shoestring, but shoestrings cost money. We're doing it for less than that.

As I've said from the start, this began and remains a labor of absolute love, of storytelling above all.

And thank you for being a part of it.

Please keep it up, especially since the best parts of this story are still ahead of us.

This episode is called hostages. It starts exactly where the last episode left off.

The divorce decree between Joanne and me stipulated that we each got six weeks with

our two sons during the summer. Though I was obligated to give Joanne a week's notice if I wanted to take

the boys out of Virginia where I lived, I had told her a month in advance that my parents and I

planned to take the boys to Disney World. Apparently me getting to parent our sons, even just for a few weeks, triggered her.

As I set out from DC after work on Friday afternoon, driving west toward my parents' home in Western Pennsylvania,

fully expecting that we'd all be heading south the next morning bound for Florida,

I got a call from my mom

telling me that the boys were, well, they were missing. So was Joanne. I actually was so upset

on that long drive home that I had to pull over twice to throw up from the stress. But instead of

...