Plus ca change

"...my Agency is concerned only with winning. We are not regular guys in any sense of the word; we have no code of behaviour which would withstand the light of day, still less an in-depth investigation by the Washington Post. What we do have is a number of specialised operatives who are skilled in inflincting PAIN. Many of them have been doing this for years, they think about it all the ime. I'm afraid that some of them kind of like it. ..Do I have to go on ?"

This is the brutal Blucher, American nemesis of Charlie Mortdecai, hero (?) of "after you with the pistol" by Kyril Bonfiglioli (Secker and Warburg 1979 .. about when the 32K RAM PET was all the rage) . 2nd book in the Mortdecai Trilogy Black Swan Press 1991 reprinted. ISBN 0 948238 11 9

Bonfiglioli was born (1928) of an English mother and an Italian /Slovene father, lived amongst some wealth was educated at Balliol and acheived considerable notoriety after a time in the army as an "art dealer" on the fringes of respectability and illicit/forged/stolen artworks, their owners. traders and the complicated maze of international swindlers, wheelers and dealers that populate this unsavory landscape. Died 1985.

Almost certainly associated with the intelligence services who set up Andrew Gillligan.