van Tanner is another of Block's E individualists. He is a quasi-unofficial spy who works when he feels like it on his own terms for a government agency so secret that the CIA does not know what the unnamed agency does.

Tanner's belonging to lost causes gives him allies and potential friends in places all over the world, friends who need to hear just the password or the names of other members to accept him instantly. Block has written that Tanner is the archetypal outsider; his joining fringe groups is the other side of his opposition to the establishment. Tanner's inability to sleep gives him time to read and to gather unusual information and to learn many arcane languages, knowledge that allows him access to people in far-away places and strange cultures. His knowledge of languages also lets him hear and understand secret information that others do not...