How to Archer (2 page)

Because God knows I didn’t.

The Long Bar, Raffles Hotel, Singapore
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Just so we’re clear, I didn’t want to write a how-to book.
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Because I’m pretty confident that any book I write will be a runaway bestseller, get translated into about a thousand languages, and wind up on the shelves (though not for very long) of every bookstore from Hoboken to Hanoi. And so I ask you: what do you think’s going to happen when I go
mano a mano
with some enemy agent who’s read the trade secrets of Sterling Archer, the world’s greatest secret agent?

Answer: I will shoot him in the face.

But the fact that he (or she—let’s be honest, I’ve shot a woman before) has read this book and gotten a rare glimpse into the mind of Sterling Archer, the world’s greatest secret agent, might give said aforementioned enemy agent crucial insight into my thinkings and doings at a critical moment (i.e., right about the time I would normally shoot him in the face).

This could make my job harder.

And while there are many things to like about being a devastatingly handsome, martini-drinking, jet-setting, model-banging, world’s greatest secret agent, hard work isn’t one of them. If I wanted to work hard, I’d be a farmer. Albeit a devastatingly handsome one. So even though my contract with (the man-hating, unkempt überfeminists at) HarperCollins makes it abundantly clear that I am legally bound—especially now that I’ve spent the advance—to write a how-to book, I am doing so only because said aforementioned contract is apparently iron-fucking-clad.

But whatever. I bloom where I’m planted.

Just to reiterate, I think this whole thing is a bad idea, Especially this section. In addition to possibly enjeopardizing my life at some point in the future, sharing my secrets of tradecraft is wildly irresponsible: I bet this book won’t be in stores twenty minutes before some dumb idiot kid catches himself on fire trying to make a Molotov cocktail (see
Molotov Cocktail,
page 84). But that’s HarperCollins’s problem. And apparently they have the best lawyers in the entire world.
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Thus, for the first time ever, I will now reveal many of the secret techniques which have helped make me, Sterling Archer, the world’s greatest secret agent. In the world.

My contract—clearly and repeatedly—states that I am required to deliver a manuscript of no less than 30,000 words. And so the book you just bought
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is going to have exactly 30,000 words in it.
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The good news is that this word-processing software keeps a running tally of each and every word that I type. Like this one and this one and this one and this one and this one.

The bad news is that there is absolutely no way I can teach you how to be even a
regular
secret agent—let alone an incredibly stylish one—in 30,000 words. And you can just forget about learning how to become the world’s
greatest
secret agent. For one thing, that job’s already filled. By me, For another thing, a lot of being the world’s greatest secret agent is just instinct.

And I cannot teach you how to sense danger, like a dog can sense if there’s a ghost in the house. I cannot teach you how to know, quite possibly before he knows it himself, what your enemy’s next move will be. I cannot teach you how to recognize the precise moment in the evening when the beautiful woman sitting across from you at the baccarat table will decide that—less than one hour from now—she is going to let you do things to her body that just this very morning would have been utterly abhorrent to her. If she could have even imagined them.
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What I can (and am contractually obligated to) do is paint it all for you in broad strokes. We won’t be able to cover everything, and what we do cover we probably won’t cover all that well, but at least you’ll have some faint notion of what it is that I actually do for a living. Which is—as I may have already mentioned—be Sterling Archer, the world’s greatest secret agent, In keeping with the broad-strokes concept, let me first prime the canvas, if you will, by defining a few core concepts about intelligence gathering for you, to wit and thusly:

At its most basic level, intelligence gathering is getting someone to show and/or tell you something that they should not, in fact, show and/or tell you. This is not unlike getting a woman to show and/or tell you that she has two kids with her soon-to-be ex-husband, the divorce from whom has not yet been finalized. You obviously don’t care about her still being married (see recipe for
Mint Julep,
page 82), but the two kids are a definite, possibly asthmatic, deal breaker.
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And so intelligence gathering is divided into two general categories: human intelligence (or HUMINT) and signals intelligence (or SIGINT).

Signals intelligence gathering relies on a variety of electronic devices: radios, satellites, um, I suppose the telephone would fall under this heading … look, I’ll be honest: I don’t know much about SIGINT. That’s for the lab-coated geeks in ISIS SIGINT Control. Those pathetic little men with slide rules sticking out of their pocket protectors, wearing ties with short-sleeved shirts. I’m not kidding: they actually wear ties with short sleeves. I guess the short sleeves are more practical attire for what they do all day, which I can only assume is masturbate under their desks while looking at hobbit-porn on the internets. The point is, I know about as much about SIGINT as those fist-glazing nerds know about what a clitoris looks like.
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The whole concept—by which I mean signals intelligence, not that mysterious and magical, sometimes mauve, sometimes brown, amazing little pleasure bean known as the clitoris—is incredibly boring to me. Which is why I focus my considerable talents in the area of human intelligence.

Human intelligence, as its name implies, is gathered from humans. Also known as people. Sometimes, but not always, these people are exotic, stunning
femmes fatales,
and I gather intelligence from them during or after sex.
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Sometimes these people are men, who are usually either oily little Peter Lorre types (who can easily be bribed or intimidated into giving me information) or evil, Van Dyke-bearded masterminds with surprisingly big muscles (whom I usually have to fight, in a fairly elaborate set-piece, toward the end of whatever mission I’m on).

But sometimes the situation calls for something besides sex or fighting. When that happens, in addition to just sort of mentally disengaging from the entire mission, I am forced to use one or more of the numerous espionage techniques at my disposal:

You probably already know what this is. I try not to rely on bribery too heavily, for two reasons: one, it’s pretty boring, Two, ISIS has this whole big voucher process where you have to sign out the money, which they then count—like every
single
dollar—on Mother’s desk, and the whole time she’s just smirking at you with that smirky little smirk on her smirkly smirking face.

A cutout is just a go-between, who goes between (I just got that) two intelligence agents. The cutout, if compromised, cannot in turn compromise the mission, because he doesn’t know who is supplying the information, who is receiving the information, or even what the information is. Actually, reading back over that I’m not sure the concept was ever properly explained to me. Because that doesn’t seem like it would work, does it? How does he know where he’s going?

A dead drop is a secret location that makes it possible for two (or more) agents to exchange information without having to meet in person. One agent places the information
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in the dead drop—for example, a mailbox. He then uses a prearranged signal to alert a second agent that a drop has been made—for example, a small red flag on the outside of the… Goddamn it, An hour of research. To basically just learn how the U. S. Postal Service works.

I’m not a huge fan of using disguises. For one thing, if I’m being completely honest, I rely a lot on my looks. For a bunch of stuff, Mostly getting laid. So I’m never eager to put on shabby clothes and some old-guy makeup and a big fake nose. Or whatever, That being said, I
will
throw on the occasional false mustache. And not just when I’m undercover: sometimes I’ll just put one on and walk around the apartment, yelling at Woodhouse with an Armenian accent. Because, for reasons as yet unknown to me, this literally scares him to death.
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