Spy operations are real head scratches sometimes.

They begin in confusion and they end in doubt

and then a whole other stuff happens in the middle,

and it's not always entirely clear what the point of the whole thing is.

There's keeping a low profile.

And then there's James Wolfe, not his real name.

That's a pseudonym.

I would tell you what he looks like, but his

official headshot on the jacket of his novels is just the back of his head. Shot from behind,

see you can't glimpse his face. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. This is sources and methods from NPR.

James Wolfe had a career as a British intelligence officer. Now he writes about them. His latest

espionage novel is spies and other gods. It is chockful of spies, of people pretending to be spies,

secret operations, deceit. I spoke to James Wolfe about all of that and about writing fiction as an

ex-spy when the truth can be stranger and more tangled than fiction. A note, as always,

we are back again Thursday with our regular episode to unpack the week's biggest national security

news. James Wolfe, welcome to sources and methods.

Thank you very much. I gather from your acknowledgments that even your kids give you a hard time

about the pseudonym. They do. They're young enough that they don't quite understand the reason for it.

And obviously they, I mean, I think they feel in a very nice way, they feel proud on my behalf. And so I think they'd like me to be able to be a bit more front-footed about publicity for the book. So we'll see. We'll see how things go. You know, I often look with some envy at novelists in the States or novelists who were once intelligence officers and the way that they're able to be a little bit more open than we are in the UK. So maybe one day in the future I can be a bit more open about these things.

I'm so curious about what you're allowed to write as a former British intelligence officer

and what you're not allowed to write.

Here in the CIA, I covered national security for years.

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