“What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives.”
The line belongs to Alec Leamas, from the movie, The spy who came in from the cold. The Cold War, a sordid world of espionage, sabotage, assassination and deception; where governments attempted to outcompete each other through war and other means. It certainly wasn’t all James Bond and vodka martinis.





