A Long Wait

Intelligence agents and special forces operatives must cope with long periods of inaction. There is probably a relevant passage in the Dominic Flandry series. In the Time Patrol series:

"As often during a long and uncertain wait - though oftenest in future centuries - [Everard] withdrew into memories."

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART TWO, 209 B. C., p. 109.

We read a memory of an unrecorded mission.

"...years in special forces had finally given him a rare gift among humans: the ability to remain motionless for exceptionally long periods and defy boredom and the urge to fidget.

"So he schooled himself to adapt to the inner contemplative life that alone can stop a man in solitary confinement from going mad."

-Frederik Forsyth, The Afghan (London, 2006), CHAPTER TWELVE, p. 289.

Inner contemplation sounds better than mere memory. A Zen monk told me, "Don't fidget!" In a previous novel, The Fist Of God, Forsyth's character, Mike Martin, while remaining completely concealed from anyone else, watched a possibly compromised dead letter drop for eight hours before approaching it. Eight hours of motionless alertness: a day's work. Flandry would have been capable of it.