Agent Provocateur: An undercover agent that has infiltrated an organization, and then dispenses bad advice in order to harm it. I have some friends in business who, I think, might accuse some of their less-competent co-workers of being 'Agent Provocateurs.'

Brush Contact: An exchange of information or material with a momentary, hopefully unnoticed hand-off between two agents in a public place: i.e., the classic visual of an agent with a briefcase walking in one direction passes someone walking in the opposite direction and suddenly the other one has the briefcase (a nice example is in the opening credits of the old Rob Estes/Mitzi Capture cable show 'Silk Stalkings,' if you can find it on the tube. There's also a nice one in the movie Office Space, when Peter passes off the disc containing the percent-of-a-penny-stealing computer virus).

Burned: The undesirable exposure of an agent, rendering them useless for further espionage activities. The 'burning' of a Superagent would be devastating given Directive Number One: Maintenance of Secrecy.

Cutout: The intermediary used by agents to avoid risking exposure; for example, J uses a cut-out (not named, though possibly it was Dr. Hoevenaers), to pick-up Apparite's Reader's Ticket at a Post Office Box. J himself was the cut-out between 'Robert Kramer' and the Soviets when it came to the dead-drop of confidential material in Soho Square.

Dead-drop: The means by which sensitive material can be left by one agent so it can be discreetly picked-up for use by another. Very commonly used, some are elaborately designed (inside dead animals out in the woods, for example), while others are surprisingly simple (inside a London movie-theater's bathroom's toilet tank or in the knot of a tree, a method which the Soviets once used in D.C.). The dead-drop in Soho Square was designed so Hitch and Apparite could follow the Russian to his safe-house, although the Soviets usually preferred to do them in more remote areas if possible (they would have preferred, say, Hampstead Heath, or the middle of Hyde Park). This time, it should be noted, they would pay for their inattention to such details.

Defector: An agent (or other important person, like a scientist) who leaves his home country permanently for another. Most defectors went from East to West, though not always (Kim Philby, George Blake, and Guy Burgess went from Britain to the Soviet Union, for example). The Soviets in particular were hurt by KGB agents defecting to the West (usually the U.S.) in the late fifties and early sixties-including such important persons as the KGB assassin Bogdan Stashinsky and famed dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Defector-In-Place: This was someone working in the service of a nation (usually in Intelligence) who has, for all practical purposes, defected to the enemy yet continues to work (on the surface, at least) in his previous capacity. A type of double-agent that can, obviously, be quite devastating.

Disinformation: Supplying false information to obtain a desired result by confusing the enemy; i.e., in WWII the Allies tricked the Nazis into believing the Normandy Invasion was going to be launched at Pas de Calais by General George S. Patton, when in reality it occurred on the Normandy Beaches without Patton's involvement at all. The radio and bogus-landing campaign provided the Germans with enough 'disinformation' in order for them to buy it as truth.

Double-Agent: The 'turning' of an agent against his country, who then begins serving their enemy--perhaps the worst thing a man can do, in John Apparite's opinion. Most working 'doubles' are basically a 'Defector-in-Place.'

'Illegals': Deep, deep undercover agents living amongst the population of the nation they wish to spy on, the Soviets were quite adept at using them in the U.S. back in the fifties. On all appearances, they appeared to be hard-working, up-standing émigrés, but in reality, they were gathering information on the U.S. and passing it--discreetly, of course--to their handlers for processing and conveyance back to the USSR.

Interrogation Techniques: These are the psychological tricks and methods professionals use to break-down the subject of an interrogation (short of using actual torture). Altering light and sound conditions, confusing the subject as to day or night (often with sleep deprivation), being in turns angry or kind to the subject (the 'good cop-bad cop' approach), and various means of offering or withdrawing food or water are common means to get someone talking. It can get rough at times, though it falls short of what most would consider 'torture.'

Legend: This is an extensive false-identity used by an agent to conceal his true name and place of origin and, of course, his employer. More than just a 'cover,' this is basically an impersonation of a completely falsified identity-like Apparite posing as Robert Kramer, though usually for longer, and more in-depth.

Mole: An agent that has infiltrated an enemy or rival organization with the purpose on spying on it. William Standerton is an MI6 'mole' in the London KGB-that sort of thing. For years the Soviets were to thought to have had many 'moles' in the U.S. government, hence the paranoia about 'communist infiltrators.'

One-Time Pad: A code that is designed to be destroyed after use for only a single message, 'one time pads' are a common means to insure the secure passing of information-since the code is used but once, having it broken does no harm to future communications. A famous example of this going wrong came in the 1950's when a group of Soviet agents in Europe used the same code for multiple communications, leading to great damage when it was broken by the West.

Hey, it's called a 'one-time pad' for a reason, camrades!

Safe-House: A place where secret agents can live, work, or take shelter from their enemies without--they hope--being discovered. The Director, it has been rumored, had safe-houses ready at a moment's notice in most major cities across the globe (this comes into play in the second book, Apparite's Revenge).

Sheep-Dipped: Euphemism for being 'cleansed' of one's old identity, partly to hide an agent's true identity from his enemies, but also to reduce the chance of anyone tracing him back to his country of origin, or to the government or agency for whom he is working. For example, when U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers got captured, he had not been 'sheep-dipped' enough to prevent the Soviets from knowing he was flying U2's for the CIA, which proved a great embarrassment to the U.S. government.

Sleeper-Agent: An agent living and working in enemy territory as an 'illegal' but who does no active espionage work for years--sometimes over a decade--until finally called into service. You might imagine how tough it would be to discover such a person, even when they begin working actively as a spy.

Surveillance: The art of following, listening, or watching people in order to obtain information from them, this is one of the mainstays of spy 'tradecraft.' Apparite and J listen to a 'bug' in Dolci's; Hitch and Apparite 'tail' the Soviet courier back to his safe-house; and the FBI planted tons of bugs in known hang-outs of the Mob (which they almost certainly still do, by the way). A very effective way of gaining an advantage, although in modern times you often need a court order to do so legally.

Vetting: This is a fancy term for 'background check,' though the checks that secret services perform are way, way more intensive than the ones maybe your employer did before hiring you. Hard to believe, but at first (meaning after WWII) Western agents were often found solely through personal recommendation from colleagues and--surprise!--some of them turned out to be communist sympathizers, doubles, etc. Finally someone figured out that it was best to fully check-out these people out BEFORE hiring them, and then things got better in that regard. I'm still amazed that it took them as long as it did before this was done on a regular basis.