Robert Kennedy Zhongguancun E Plaza, Beijing, China Kane squatted near an alleyway, yanking a piece of meat off a skewer that he seriously doubted was chicken. But he didn’t care. It was delicious, and he was hungry. His luggage had been forwarded to his hotel, all booked under one of his aliases unknown to anyone but him: Tom Pile, an insurance salesman from Florida who every year took one big vacation some place exotic, and posted about it and his exploits on Facebook for all sixteen of his friends to enjoy, his settings ‘accidentally’ public so it could be easily checked. In today’s world a cover without a social media presence was no cover at all. But too elaborate a cover wasn’t of any use either. If you had a thousand friends on Facebook, then you were expected to have an active profile. He didn’t have time for that, so a cover with just a few friends, most of them sock puppets, fake Facebook profiles he’d created for just the purpose, would make it believable that he didn’t post often.
