Dear Crew of the USS Tom Clancy, Thank you so much for reading and for you paid subscribers, thank you so much for your support. This dispatch is about the last week and corresponds to this dispatch. Without further ado, I present: The Spy Who Came Back to the Coldwater Thanks for reading -Matt Farwell *** October 2, 2025 Foggy in Fort Wayne. Moon obscured by mist, silver light bleeding from behind a lace curtain. Technically today is the funeral. I pass Spy Run Creek off Goshen Road after taking a picture of a strip club sign for Brandy’s Exotic Dancers. I’m going to be around a lot of spies today, this helps me get inside their heads. • • It is a little after midnight when I get back to the Best Western.
The next morning from Fort Wayne I drive a rented Mitsubishi south on US 33. My GPS says there are 66.6 miles until Coldwater. Fall colors creeping into the foliage, their colors muted not bright, a whimper not a shout. I make a loop at the General Motors, Fort Wayne assembly plan and then get on highway 469 which is also still US 33. They’re just now harvesting the corn. Some of the combines have tank treads in triangles rather than tires. Half the fields are still up and brown, ready to be cut down, and half are in. There’s a faint rainbow from the clouds as I parallel St. Mary’s River. I’m going into this with no information but the obituary. I have not talked to Doug’s parents, Doug’s brother, Doug’s other friends. The man compartmentalized his life; it makes sense his death would also be compartmentalized. I wear a suit and a somber expression and my Army Man cufflinks as I arrive at the funeral home, promptly at 12. Coldwater, Ohio is a town full of German-American farmers and former steel workers. I am on time to the viewing which means I am late to the viewing, there’s already a line stretching to the door. A guy a little bit older than me in a blue suit with booze on his breath recognizes my Combat Infantry Badge, tells me he was in the 10th Mountain, 2-22. I tell him I was in 2-87, ask how he knew Doug. The guy is from Coldwater, has known Doug forever. I ask if we can go outside for a moment. I ask how Doug died. I have no idea, I just have suspicions that go in all directions, like a shotgun. There are many people Doug worked for CIA in Afghanistan, Doug worked for CIA on the Syria Task Force, Doug trained JSOC dudes in surveillance and counter-surveillance routines, Doug worked in Hollywood. There’s a lot of potential for some sort of un-natural death. Going in to the funeral, my potential suspect list for Doug’s death reads like a paranoid fantasy: the Mossad got him because Jolani took power in Syria and Doug’s knowledge from the Syria Task Force was a loose end. Pakistani intelligence finally got revenge, or the Taliban inserted an agent among the refugees who’s job was settling scores, or CIA finally got tired of Bravo Reality TV shows. Some ex-JSOC guy with a drug problem and a series of concussions could’ve decided to make good on all those “Oak or Pine” threats they used to make when Doug would do a reddit AMA. Then, of course, there’s Doug himself as a suspect in his own death. I worried that he his own quietus made. This was, I am told, not the case. The Blue Suit Indiana mountain man takes a hit from his vape; natural causes, possibly from a botched bowel surgery in Kansas City. That explains the coma. During COVID, Doug and I had a falling out. He wanted to come visit me in Arkansas. I was married at the time and my ex-wife requested he take a COVID test, which Doug found unreasonable.
We talked twice after that; once was a quick make-up call. The second happened when I was about to eat dinner at the Whiskey Jar in Charlottesville, Virginia months ago. Charlottesville was one of the last places I hung out with Doug in 2019, when he came up to attend my college graduation along with my ex-wife, my step-daughter, my parents, my brother and Pam and Buzz, the parents of my friend high school friend Craig who also functioned as sort of surrogate local parents for me when I was an adult in Virginia; I go to Sunday dinner at their house whenever I’m in the 757. Doug called out of the blue and I wound up talking to him for a couple of hours about everything under the sun. I really thought we’d see each other again, hang out after he’d recovered from the surgery and gotten his strength back. That wasn’t the case. Still, somehow, it makes me feel better to know that Doug was hanging out with his parents the night before he died, that he’d just gotten back from a trip to the Pacific Northwest. I’d been beating myself up for not calling or reaching out, thinking of my friend in despair, isolated on the edge of a cornfield in Ohio, feeling alone. That despair lifts. I wait in the reception line for an hour. Behind me are a farmer and his wife, last name Millenkamp; I ask if they have a cousin who is an insane dairyman in Idaho (https://capitalpress.com/2024/12/05/millenkamp-cattles-owner-charged-with-felony-aggravated-battery/). No relation, common name. A local organization called “Thanks To Our Yanks” has a basket full of green plastic army men in tiny ziplock bags with a note that says PLEASE TAKE THIS SOLDIER HOME AND PLACE IT SOMEWHERE THAT WILL REMIND YOU TO PRAY FOR THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO SERVED AND ARE SERVING OUR COUNTRY I look down at my cufflinks—cast metal designed and painted to look like green army men, a rifleman and a bazooka guy, and smile at the coincidence. Later that day a former FBI agent turned television personality and professor will say he doesn’t believe in coincidence, that “coincidence take a lot of planning” during his speech about Doug at the Luncheon.

I think back to the day before in the military lounge at the Salt Lake City Airport. Because Doug and I spent so much time hanging out with our Jicarilla Apache friends in Dulce, New Mexico, attending Go-Jii-Ya twice and getting to know the lay of the land from Monty, Gabe, Buddy, Melanie, Jojo, Miles and Homegirl, I go to the hand coiled micaceous clay seed container I got from Jicarilla Apache potter Shelden Nuñez Velarde (https://dailyutahchronicle.com/2016/11/21/print-artist-week-native-american-artist/) and retrieve some corn kernels I grew in Arkansas from corn Monty gave me, putting this in a pink mesh pouch with some dried roses. In a ziplock bag in my dresser I have strips of the American flag with Geronimo on it we flew over camp at Go-Jii-Ya, that got beat to shit by the whipping winds by Stone Lake, I’ve saved this for years without ever knowing why.
• • I sat next to a woman named Olga at the military lounge in the airport and we got chatting about the Army; she’d been stationed at Fort Eustis, in my old home of Tidewater, Virginia. I tell her how much I love the 757, she tells me that it was a difficult place to be for her. I talk about New Mexico a bit, for some reason bring up Dulce. She tells me she is Chiricahua. I explain that I’m going to the funeral for Doug, how we spent time together among the Jicarilla, then say a few words to her in Jicarilla Apache. I tell her how blessed I was to be able to run in Go-Jii-Ya as a mangani (white guy), that Monty sponsored me and Doug watched me run, helped me walk off the track at the end when I was completely out of gas—you try doing a dead sprint at 8000 feet for 300 yards while five thousand Apache cheer you or jeer you, depending on their clan affiliation (I was running for Red Clan). I show her the flag strips and the corn in the bag.
This is also not my photograph, but here you see a head runner (noted by the feathers on the head) running in Go-Jii-Ya. The Hunt for Tom Clancy’s Eternal Patrol Coverage is made possible by readers like you. Please become a paid subscriber today to read more.

          Read more
       (https://thehuntfortomclancy.substack.com/p/the-spy-who-came-back-to-the-coldwater)