Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and per...
Without the bonds of ideological conflict to restrain us any more, our troubles are just beginning.
Haunted by sad faces which moved through the rain like driftwood in a forgotten harbour.
All life has taught me to leave dangerous things unsaid.
You killed a sentry, you know that?I guessed I had...What do they expect if they mount such a damn stupid operation? Why didn't they pull us both in at once? Why put all the lights out? If anything wa...
You just happened to put your hand to your face and find it damp and you wondered what the hell Christ bothered to die for, if He ever died at all.
You could be the perfect spy. All you need is a cause.
Yes, well, I always assume that businessmen are crooks, don't you, Harry? I'm sure we all do.
Why am I despising you when I'm about to change your life?
What's it got to do with you and the CIA whether I came here with a woman or a Muscovy duck?
Todd and Larry were Quinn’s people. They were clean-limbed and pretty and, for a man of my age, ludicrously youthful.
Think I’ll just buff up the silver,’ he announced, loud enough for her to hear and do something about him if she wanted.
There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.
Then the people in this prison are intellectuals? The woman smiled. Yes, she said, they are reactionaries who call themselves progressive: they defend the individual against the state. Do you know wha...
The vertical man
The novel’s merit, then—or its offence, depending where you stood—was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible. The bad dream turned out to be one that a lot of people in the world were sha...
The embassy’s front door was of bulletproof steel lined with a veneer of English oak. You attained it by touching a button in a silent lift. The royal crest, in this air-conditioned stillness, suggest...
The driver was holding open the rear door. He was young and blond, a boy in his prime.
That’s the trouble with Americans, isn’t it, really? All that emphasis on the future. So dangerous. It makes them destructive of the present.
That’s the point, isn’t it: the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s lethargy.