ok, just talked to my friend. He was evasive and politely changed the topic so yeah, I still have zero information. I guess that's the right approach.

If I has asked him if he knew the name of the monastery as opposed to whether the entire story was a canard, I probably could have gotten further. By foolishly asking if it was a story, I think he fell back on the "zero information" strategy - as in, even if it's real and he's living a solemn life of meditation, don't say anything. Me effectively going "Hey man, I gotta question about spies" was in retrospect, pretty dumb.