The trouble with the shoe phone is that it’s in your shoe, making it damned difficult to phone in orders to the Australian government while running from fiendish Chinese agents, devious competitors and those charity collectors with the buckets on every second street corner. No, it’s not easy being Kloppers, Marius Kloppers, 001, licence to bill – in billions.

Indeed, the espionage, secrecy and delicate high-level government negotiations business is not all casinos and Aston Martins. Sometimes it is five star hotels and mere Mercedes instead.

And it is lonely. The secrecy thing rules out the social release of kicking back at the footy on Saturday with a few mates and having a whinge about the effort that goes into industrial secrets, killing a Rio takeover and running counter-espionage operations in China. Wouldn’t be considered good form in the intelligence community at all, that sort of chatter.

Even if you endanger your reputation by talking shop with civilians, you soon won’t have any mates. The fact is, few people understand the secret strain and pain, leaving them merely jealous of the very public financial gain.

Most folks really aren’t all that interested in microdots, secret codes and what it’s like wearing a red carnation in your button hole while carrying a copy of Australia’s Mining Monthly under your left arm on Tuesday afternoon at 3.17 on the southeast corner of Little Collins and Elizabeth Streets and having to remember the code and response: “Nice weather we’re having for a Wednesday.” “I’m afraid you’re mistaken – it’s Melbourne.”

Try coming home to the safehouse with yet another hard-luck story of having to ski down a mountain, parachute off a cliff and drive what was a perfectly pleasant supercar through the plate glass window of a china shop to elude various government agents and you’ll get no sympathy.

“Oh don’t start, Marius – at least you weren’t stuck in Melbourne all day.”

And, if you have any brain at all, you certainly won’t mention the honey traps. Never, ever mention the honey traps.

As for the supercars, lose concentration for half a second and you can take out a tram full of school children. And you should see what the electronic jamming devices do to the GPS. Try driving around Melbourne’s dickier streets with a Melways on your lap and one of the China Iron and Steel Association’s agents on your tail and not forgetting that the third switch from the left turns the car into a submarine while pushing forward on the windscreen wipers sprays tyre-bursting spikes and oil out the back. It’s hell.

Which is why you have to have some sympathy for 001 over the embarrassment he must be feeling after the WikiLeaks business landed him on the front page. There’s nothing a covert operations man likes less than being made overt. He won’t be game to show his fake moustache at the Spies & Secrets Club for months.

With no one else to confide in, to share the paranoia that’s part and parcel of the espionage game, you can imagine how seductive it must have been to relax with a fellow professional. Felix from the US Embassy. Old soldiers together, both having fought dirty wars on frontiers, now plying their trades in only slightly more civilised circumstances. They would have so much in common.

You were in Nigeria? I served in... well, let’s not go there.

But Felix would already know.

That quite civilised Felix, he understands the trade – those years he spent in Africa prepared him well for Canberra. Sure, he insists on a carrying a Colt 45 under his overcoat as he strolls with his contacts around the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, safely away from listening posts. A tad uncomfortable during the Australian summer, having to wear an overcoat, but that’s when the years in Algeria kick in.

And the potential for such rewarding cross-pollination, a pooling of resources, two great allies: the USA and BHP. So much in common. Three initials for a start.

It’s the spy game unchanged from back when Mesopotamia and Phoenicia were players. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Mine enemy’s enemy is mine friend – and so is my friend’s enemy and my gardener’s clients and anyone else who’s prepared to trade. You have your people in China and I have mine. And none of them are locked up – yet. (That was just another reason for the wrench in Rio-Chinalco, you just don’t know where those people have been.)

Who was playing who on the shores of Burley Griffin? Felix playing Marius, drawing admissions from him, gaining an insight into the extent of the paranoia, gauging the possibility of outright recruitment of a man only nominally Australian who suspects Canberra is spying on him, telling stories back to Washington, back to Julian Assange, back to the world ... or Marius playing Felix, picking up a tip here on developing markets for uranium, a hint there about Brazilian production expansion plans, gaining another view of China’s intentions, holding himself out as bait but actually playing a double game. Or triple. Or quadruple. The intelligence community is like that.

We have an unbalanced picture of the exchanges as Felix only reported on Marius, not on his own offerings. And of course our man 001 tells us nothing. Thus we are left to imagine the possibilities.

Is it Felix’s influence, his extensive trade craft, that has been passed on to 001 that has improved security in BHP? The only-one-photograph-allowed-on-a-desk rule for example. Civilians don’t know how easy it is to hide bugs and cameras when there are multiple allegedly-personal effects in the work area. Sure, the business about sin-binning any personal items left on a desk and confiscation on the third offense might look harsh. It might lower morale. But it’s better to have low morale than a Chinese listening device tucked into that innocuous looking St Kilda mini-football. And banning hot food in the office – a masterstroke spreading the word that 001 just doesn’t like the smell of it when it’s really just risk minimisation. Warm food is such an easy method for mass contamination by the forces of darkness.

Felix would be so reassuring. “Sure, Marius, people might think you’re a little strange, but just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re not being followed. Don’t let up – you can never be totally sure who in your office might be an agent for Them, wanting to hide secrets behind a child’s finger painting, wanting to take down your security system with a takeaway curry, leaving an improvised explosive device in a soft toy. Have you considered wearing a tinfoil hat at all times to protect yourself from rays?”

No, it’s not easy being Kloppers, Marius Kloppers, 001, licence to bill – in billions. But he’s out there, on the frontier, for all of us.

Michael Pascoe is an underappreciated spy novel writing talent and also a finance and economics commentator with more than 30 years experience in publishing and broadcasting.

This article first appeared in the March 2011 edition of Australia's Mining Monthly magazine.