To my knowledge I've met only one true spy. He didn't disappoint me.

Some years ago I was visiting a writer friend in Washington who lived in a large luxury apartment complex a mile or so northwest of the Watergate. Because it was close enough to evening to justify our consuming something stronger than tea, and because we felt that it would be more enjoyable to do so with company, we decided to visit a friend of the writer’s who lived in the same complex. The friend had been one of the CIA’s top people in Vietnam, but when I met him he was retired from the Agency—or so he said.

He was a tall fellow, about fifty years old, fit, goodlooking, with a graying, aristrocratic mane of hair and a well-tanned face—the kind of man advertisers like to place at the helm of a sixty-foot sloop. And he was as witty, charming, and intelligent as he was good-looking. In fact, he was much fun to talk to—no simple cold war party line from him, you bet. Whatever line he followed was way beyond that.