Charlie Connelly is a businessman.
When he was completing his college degree, he was looking forward to a life spent in the corporate environs and he seemed fairly content with the prospects so he was a tad surprised at himself when, receiving a recuitment offer from the quite new Central Intelligence Agency, he jumped at the chance. He was not exactly thrilled with hearing that he would have to take paratrooper classes as part of his training but most of the rest sounded good. He turned down other offers of employment as he waited for training to begin, only to be told shortly before the agreed date that the CIA's budget had been slashed over a poor performance in the eyes of then President Truman. Connelly had to scramble to find a real job.
Many years would pass and Connelly would rise in position with the large corporation who had hired him. He was a vice-president with a wife and several children and a job that took him around the globe frequently as he worked in whatever capacity his employer needed, whether it was sometimes babysitting small partners in South America or conducting negotiations with a China revitalizing after Nixon's visit. That is when the Agency came back.
Connelly was not particularly pleased to see them. He recalled that a couple of years after his first dealings with them, they had shown up smilingly saying they now had room for him. He told them then to do naughty things to themselves. After now a considerable number of years, he was ready to repeat his suggestions when something stopped him.
Was it patriotism or curiosity or just a smidge of boredom that had him agree to, while maintaining his normal work, keep his eyes and ears open and be willing to report back what he saw in regions where the Agency was low in resources? He was never quite sure but he decided to say yes.
The trouble with such things, he found, was that each time the Agency called, represented on occasion by the quite lovely Karen, they wanted just a tad more from him than last time. And Connelly was not getting any younger. Moreover, he was not trained in spycraft. He did not know dead drops and blinds and Moscow rules and the best way to detect a tail or how to disarm a gunman. He knew business and he knew people and he could observe. That is what the Agency wanted from him. The fact that as he got more involved, he realized that knowing these things would have helped a lot.