A Spy by Nature: A Novel (Alec Milius Book 1)

And as she slowed to accept a thumb drive, tucking it smoothly into her jacket pocket, she counted past three and felt something right then, for the first time since joining CIA, a tug back to a few halcyon nights of her youth, when she’d walked to the edge of herself and found that was where she was most alive.

This must be the hardest bit about being a spy, she thought. The emotion people store in you, like a bad investment. You feel like you are robbing people of something.

He popped the blister packet he pulled from his back pocket, chewing the two purple tablets en route to the kitchen, the taste bitter on his tongue. He didn’t know what was in them – the Harley Street medic prescribed them. “In the circumstances, Michael…” that is to say “bearing in mind you’ll be dead soon, you can have these experimental drugs”.

Smiley also knew, or thought he knew—the idea came to him now as a mild enlightenment—that Bill in turn was also very little by himself: that while his admirers (Bland, Prideaux, Alleline, Esterhase, and all the rest of the supporters’ club) might find in him completeness, Bill’s real trick was to use them, to live through them to complete himself,