It’s not clear when that life swerved into espionage. According to a few people I spoke with, Whitson said that he’d had a mentor, Pete Lewis, who’d inducted him into undercover work. Lewis apparently met a tragic and deeply improbable end, like something out of a James Bond movie: he was killed by a poison dart hidden in an umbrella. Richard Edlund, one of several to mention the poison-dart story, saw it as a vital part of Whitson’s origin story; it was almost like Whitson thought he could avenge his friend’s death by working as a spy. Who could say how much of it was true? My hope was that
...more
