(CNN) A rare espionage trial began Wednesday in Virginia as a jury heard testimony rife with references to covert communications devices and blocks of stashed cash payouts.

In a shabby hotel room in Shanghai last year, three Chinese men, all surnamed Yang, had questioned Kevin Patrick Mallory, a former CIA covert officer, about the new Trump administration's foreign policy. What did he know about the THAAD missile system? The administration's stance on the South China Sea?

"They were a little bit coy," Mallory later recalled. "I asked them point blank" if they worked for the government and "they didn't deny it."

Mallory was sitting across from a CIA investigator in the spy agency's headquarters in May of 2017 as he recounted the episode and how a headhunter had approached him on LinkedIn for what he thought was an interview for a job consulting with a Chinese think tank.

This week in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, Mallory sat next to defense attorneys as video from that CIA meeting played out -- a central piece of evidence in the case brought by the Justice Department accusing him of spying.

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