Writing for me is not a premeditated act. It just happens - characters keep coming out of nowhere and doing things I never expected them to do. The most persistent and most productive of these has been Paul Christopher, whom I didn't expect to see again after he appeared in 'The Miernik Dossier.'

I've consciously tried not to romanticize anything, especially not intelligence work. I've always said that I've been writing a series of episodic, naturalistic novels. The people just happen to be spies, politicians, civil servants.

Richard M. Helms, the first director of Central Intelligence to rise from the ranks, was fond of saying that the CIA had been founded to make sure that there would never be another Pearl Harbor. Underlying this mission impossible was the wishful supposition that an America that knew everything could prevent anything.

I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.

Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.

The '60s are my favorite decade - with the Cold War, the women's movement. And then there's the music, the fashion, the clothes, the hair.

Sometimes I think that if we have to go back, then it certainly won't be to Jerusalem. Not to the Jerusalem beset with racism that we left at the height of the last Gaza war.

Even a total and universal disarmament does not guarantee the maintenance of peace.