There are four principal characters who participate in the action: an anonymous protagonist-narrator, a British intelligence agent; Colonel Ross, a British officer, director of a department of Military Intelligence; Brigadier Dalby, director of a civilian provisional intelligence unit on special assignment; and "Jay" (a code name), an independent "business man" presently working in the interests of the Soviet Union.

The anonymous agent is single, of working-class origin, tall, stout, strongminded, fast-talking, wise-cracking, patriotic and incorruptible. He has black hair, blue eyes, and is dark complected. He wears glasses. In the pockets of his trench coat he carries several packs of French Gauloises, a garlic sausage, some Normandy butter, and a hammerless Smith & Wesson revolver.

Deighton's characterization here owes something to Homer's Odysseus, who tells the Cyclops: "My name is NoMan"; to John Osborn's Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (1952); and to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe in, for...