How spies do their expenses

Just like us, it turns out. This fun story from Atlas Obscura pulls from several spy memoirs to illustrate what kind of expenses clandestine operatives rack up, and how they claim for them.

…as [former CIA director William Colby] found, there wasn’t much tolerance in Washington for flexible budgeting. “Once,” he wrote, “I had been indiscreet enough to reply to a question about an item in a Southeast Asia appropriation that it was a ‘slush fund’ to meet future needs…the fund was eliminated from my budget by the examiner.”

That sounds awfully familiar. But it’s good to hear that I may have something in common with James Bond, after all. I look forward to the next movie to see how he dispatches the villain known as Kronos. (Martini before or after, I wonder.)