Gordon Carrera

We've got a picture of the CIA in crisis mode, lots of meetings, meetings about meetings, trying to rebuild its networks, trying to think about how it can gather intelligence using Ken Taylor, James Bond to gather intelligence to potentially rescue the hostages in the embassy, the main hostage pool, if you like, but not R6.

But that six in a way are not the priority, are they?

Partly because they're not visible.

And it's that very interesting thing.

You see this as a journalist with hostage stories.

When you have a visible group of hostages who the captors are putting out on the media, all the pressure, the public opinion, the political pressure is, let's do something about them, of which there is a lot in Washington.

But there isn't much...

pressure to deal with these six because, of course, no one knows about them.

But at this point, the realization, as we said, because the sense that they can't go on like this in these houses being hidden, and because of the fear the secret will come out, the job of trying to do something about them will end up with, in part, CIA and Langley working, I think, with the Canadians, it's fair to say, to come up with a way of getting them out.

And here's where we meet.

We've met the Canadian hero.

Let's meet the American, you know, the American hero who is immortalized in film, of course, by Ben Affleck.

Yeah.

Which is really interesting, isn't it?

You're not joining the CIA as a kind of classic spy, but as a graphic artist.

The skills, actually, of Mendes as an artist are relevant to what he's going to be doing, as well as the practical skills, I guess, if you like, of being able to draw.

But also, I mean, as we know in the intelligence world, actually, you're dealing with sometimes with forgeries, with pictures, with things like that.

And I think that's one of the interesting aspects of this, isn't it?

He's got a really peculiar skill set.

I don't know if you knew any artists or forgers at the CIA or whether you can tell us all.