How to Archer (6 page)

And before you say: “Man, I’d
never
put anything up my butt! That’s gay!” go read the book
Papillon.
Then go watch the movie they made out of it, which stars actual real-life United States Marine and race-car driver Steve McQueen. Then go watch, in this order,
The Getaway, Le Mans, Bullitt, Junior Bonner, The Magnificent Seven,
and
The Great Escape.

Then call Ali MacGraw and ask her who’s gayer: Steve fucking McQueen, or you.

Fuck off.

I do not drive an Aston Martin DB5.
⁴⁰
Mainly because I don’t have a vagina.
⁴¹

When I do drive, I prefer at least 350 cubic inches of Detroit muscle under the hood. Something along the lines of, say, a Dodge Challenger. Or some other prospective corporate sponsor. Because I need to know that the power is there if I need it, coiled and ready to strike.

Not unlike a
cobra.
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But the way I see it, if people were supposed to drive automobiles, John Henry Ford wouldn’t have invented cabs. Or bourbon. Which was probably invented by some other guy. I don’t know, I honestly don’t really care, and as my editrix has made abundantly clear, this is a how-to book, not a history book. So here’s
how to
drive like a secret agent:

Big. Fast. Hard.

And no, the sexual innuendoes are not lost on me. This is me you’re talking to. Or vice versa.
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But many of the same principles that apply to sex also apply to tactical driving. I don’t necessarily know what those principles are, but I do know that (unless you’re Dan Tanna) you’re not going to ask the car to move in with you. No matter how much junk is in the trunk.
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Oh, and also always try to back into a parking space. I think I remember hearing that.

Sometimes, in my profession as the world’s greatest secret agent, I am required to drive, captain, pilot, or otherwise conduce forwardly, vehicles which are not automobiles. These vehicles include, but are not limited to, the following, including:

I personally find airboats rather difficult to drive. That’s because I’m constantly fidgeting around, trying to find a comfortable position for my gigantic, throbbing, purple-veined erection. Oh my God, is there anything in the world more infinitely cool than a screaming airboat?! No! Because an airboat is what happens when some mad, brilliant Civil War scientist decides it might be pretty cool to mount a 700-horsepower aircraft engine on a lightweight aluminum johnboat. Which, when you think about it: how did the Confederates not win the war?

Plus, the seats on an airboat are generally mounted very high on its frame. And while this raises the vessel’s center of gravity a bit higher than the ideal, it also makes it a lot easier to tear through the bayous, blasting the beady eyeballs out of every alligator in sight with an AR-15.
⁴⁵

Kinda rednecky And those two-stroke engines aren’t doing the ozone layer (or whatever Earth’s giant, invisible space-blanket is called) any big favor. However, like most other things rednecks love (moonshine, tractor pulls, anal sex, boar hunting), snowmobiles are pretty dang fun.

Technically an automobile. But the “500” refers to its engine displacement. In cubic
centimeters.
Which isn’t all that impressive for a motorcycle, much less a two-door sedan. Seriously, whenever I see one of these at a stoplight in Italy, I always expect a bunch of midget
pagliacci
to clamber out and run all around the intersection, whacking each other with
sfilatini.

Although I am fantastic at riding them, and could probably do a wheelie for about a mile if I wanted to, my only real interest in motorcycles concerns the sidecar. Which is a cocktail.

I realize that an elephant is an animal. But I think it’s perfectly reasonable to include elephants in a section about vehicles because I also realize that I’ve seen about a thousand skinny little brown dudes
riding around on
about a thousand elephants.

And no, genius, obviously not all at once.

Because that would mean I’m a handsome Roman centurion, gaping at Hannibal and the endless horde of elephant-riding Moors he’s waltzing through the gap in the Pyrenees that I was supposed to be in charge of defending. And also wishing that I wore a tunic, like all the other centurions, because I just shit my pants.

Also: Indian elephants (the ones you can ride) have ears shaped like India. African elephants (the ones you most certainly
cannot
ride) have ears shaped like Africa.
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Poison sucks.

I’m not talking about the hair-metal band (which totally sucks) or the Bell Biv DeVoe song (which totally doesn’t). I’m talking about the assorted pills, powders, capsules, liquids, sprays, and umbrella tips that spies use to kill other spies.

I’ve seen agents killed with everything from roach powder to radioactive pellets. Often these poisons are fast acting: if you got hit in the neck with a dart tipped with poison
⁴⁷
from the tiny
Phyllobates terribilis,
also known as the Poison Dart Frog (holy shit—true story—I just this second got why they call them that) you’d be dead before you reached the end of this sentence.
⁴⁸

Other poisons are slow-acting: Let’s say you’re on a mission in some Eastern Bloc capital (doesn’t matter which one—they’re all crappy) and some potato-or cabbage-faced guy on the metro “accidentally” jabs you in the leg with his umbrella. You beat the shit out of him.
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You complete your mission and fly back to the States. You go out with the stewardess you banged on the return flight. Turns out she’s got like, a
nine-day
layover, and wants to spend every second of it with you. You make excuses for the first three or four days—during which you basically have to keep your phone plugged into the charger because she’s calling and texting you every waking minute—but by day five she’s really starting to get pouty.

You realize that at some point in the future you will probably have another mission to whatever grim, diesel-choked shithole she’s from, and that you will definitely want some female companionship while you’re there. Either her or maybe that big, blowzy friend of hers who was working coach. So you take her out to a just-okay restaurant, get some drinks down her gullet (and she’s not only Eastern European but also a stewardess, so be prepared to buy it by the
liter),
and work the conversation around to asking if she would maybe, possibly—and not necessarily tonight, but not necessarily
not
tonight—be open to a threesome with her big, blowzy friend.

And guess what?

She totally is. Turns out they both are. They do it all the time, as a matter of fact.

You snap your fingers for the check as she makes a phone call. You literally whip the cab driver like a horse to make him drive faster. You get to your place just as Big Blowzy does, and before you know it, all three of you are covered in champagne and grape-seed oil and feathers, and blasting from your stereo—at that very moment—is none other than Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Poison.”

And then you die.

From whatever was on that umbrella.
A week ago.
Which is why I have spent the past decade building up an immunity to the seven poisons most commonly used in my line of work, by injecting myself with trace amounts of them. I
highly
disrecommend trying this yourself. You shouldn’t even mess around with mushrooms unless you’re a board-certified mycologist.
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For reasons of national (not to mention personal) security, I obviously cannot share with you what these seven poisons are, but my mnemonic device for remembering them is CAPGURF.
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And so, in summation: poison sucks. Mostly because there’s nothing you can realistically do to safeguard against it. Not unlike sexually transmitted diseases. Or unwanted pregnancies.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, an inordinate amount of international espionage is centered around casinos. I would like to believe it’s because secret agents—and the women who love them—live incredibly exciting lives and thus thrill at the idea of fortunes, both great and small, being won or lost on the turn of a single card. I would absolutely like to believe that.