In the winter of 1998 I found myself in an anonymous room on the top floor of a hotel overlooking the Brisbane River—standard and featureless furniture, bland abstract prints, glasses and a jug of water on the coffee table—undergoing a series of interviews and psychometric tests as part of the recruitment process towards a possible position with ASIS, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. Not only was the setting dull, as neutral and ‘non-discriminatory’ as recruitment policy would require; the interview followed suit. So conventional was the procedure that my spook hosts dusted off that dubious old chestnut the Myers Briggs personality test—a modern version of the medieval belief in the four bodily humours—to set about digging into my persona. The calibres were out, the measurements recorded: they were looking to gauge the length and breadth of a human soul. ASIS may have been looking for other intangibles, too: a heart, a conscience, signs of fear, guilt, treachery, integrity, consistency. A capacity to lie.

What could I bring to the table, by way of enhancing the international spying capacity of my government? I’d already made it through five of the estimated seven stages of recruitment covering general intelligence, appropriate university education, knowledge of international affairs and domestic politics, group role play, language skills and no doubt some other forms of screening that were going on without my knowledge. The government, so far, was still interested. Subterfuge or camouflage—the stuff of spy-craft romanticism—were out of the question, as I stood nearly two metres tall and was entirely bald. No agency could have smuggled me away for covert operations. Discretion in confidential matters? Yes. Integrity? Certainly. Stability? No—my private life just then was a shambles, my marriage coming off the rails and my daughter struggling at primary school with epilepsy and learning delays. After many years living and working in Spain, I was having trouble adjusting to the return to Australian life, and this attempt to join ASIS, thus taking a 180-degree turn in my professional career, was symptomatic of my restlessness.