Such Men Are Dangerous

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The desk men at the Agency run to type. They are all an inch or two over average. They wear dark suits, white shirts, striped ties. They drink scotch and water or bourbon and water or, in the summer, vodka Collinses. They work out once a week at a gym, usually handball or squash. They smile a lot, but not quite enough to get on your nerves. You wouldn’t mistake them for sales managers or purchasing agents, but might think they were personnel men, which, come to think of it, is close. If you’d been around them much, you’d place them right off. This isn’t the liability it might seem; they don’t operate under cover, hardly ever leave Washington, and so it doesn’t matter a hell of a lot who knows what they are.

This particular one was no more than a couple of percentage points off the standard. He was a little bonier than most, and I’d guess his weekly exercise was cross-country running. He shook hands firmly, looked me right in the eyes when he talked, and had a voice that was resonant with sincerity and definition of purpose. None of this means anything, ever.

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