Mr. Smith the assassin

So anyway, I went in to have lunch at The Vintry although my real reason for stopping in was to get the bartender, Mike Smith, to tell me more of his story. Last week when I was in there, Mike told me that he was originally from London where he’d been in “the wine trade and luxury food division,” and then had moved, on a whim, to Matakana after doing a Google search for “Farmers Markets New Zealand.”

Something about all that just didn’t sit right with me. Who just gets up and decides to abandon London, very quickly, so they can go work in a wine bar in a little village in New Zealand?

Anyway, I sat down at the bar and ordered a chef’s platter and a glass of Takatu Pinot Rose. While Mike was in the kitchen working on my lunch, we had a little chat. I asked him what, specifically, he had done in London.

This and that, he said, his back to me as he shaved meats onto a cheese board.

Like what sort of “this and that?” I asked him. He stopped cutting meat, wiped his hands on his apron, and without turning to face me, said, “Ever heard of the MI6?”

Well, yes, of course. This is the British Secret Service, the counter-intelligence and security agency where James Bond and Miss Honeypenny worked.

“You worked for MI6?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer me and went back to shaving meat.

Remember Chuck Barris, the impresario of “The Gong Show”? A very whacky guy. Back in the ‘80s, he wrote a “memoir”—Confessions of a Dangerous Mind—that, in 2002, was turned into a farcical film with George Clooney and Sam Rockwell, among others. In both the book and movie, Barris claims to be an assassin for the CIA. In fact, in the book he said that he went on frequent foreign trips in connection with prizes awarded on his game shows as a cover for his purported assassination assignments.

Now usually, the CIA just routinely refuses “to confirm or deny” stories about its operations and who works for them. But after Barris’ memoir was published, they took the very unusual move of having a spokesman label his book “ridiculous.”

A game show host is an assassin for the CIA? Almost as absurd as a London bartender working for the same outfit James Bond is supposed to have worked for. But I will say one thing for Mr. Smith—he makes a mean chef’s platter. And who knows—maybe someone will come along and want to make a movie based on his story. It’s happened before.