Tracking Strategic Materials Stolen from the Former Soviet-Bloc - My Next Job

In the early 90's, against the backdrop of the former Soviet-Union continuing its implosion in an almost anarchic world of corrupt former communists, rich opportunists, and millions of disillusioned citizens, the US government realized that former Soviet strategic materials and nuclear weaponry were all at risk of being lost to outright theft or sale.  Unpaid and hungry (drunk) soldiers posted at secure installations all over the former Soviet-Bloc, Russian military facilities that were not being financed to maintain their weapons nor protect them from outsiders,  and strategic materials produced and housed at hundreds of facilities all over the former Bloc represented an unimaginable security risk to the entire world.

The CIA was well aware of the situation.

I was asked to help monitor and track the materials, identify the individuals that had stolen them and were trying to sell them, and lead CIA officers to transaction locations.

No one at the CIA desk at the US Embassy in Warsaw expected me to continue taking assignments.  I was made aware that accepting a role in any operation did not guarantee payment anymore. Funding had somehow changed and, because a lot of bad guys were doing what I would be doing, there had to be concrete results from my activity.  I learned to plant tracking devices on people, their clothes, and their bags. Other "concrete results" included photos of people and places and providing readings from sensors that I could produce of the materials that I was tracking. (I got very good at calibrating my geiger counter.)