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Drawing on a wide range of material, from memoirs of former spy masters to the highly acclaimed TV series Le Bureau des Légendes, this article shows how documentary as well as fictional accounts of double agents cast light on a "dark underside" of the international system. This dark underside is made up of exceptional spaces of secrecy in which intelligence organizations and spies operate. The article's main point of entry when analyzing these spaces is the intimate connection between secrecy and subjectivity. While secrecy as a social practice has received increased attention in sociological accounts of secret intelligence, the constitutive role of secrecy in relation to subjectivity is a much less explored theme. This theme, it is argued, becomes especially valuable for thinking about the conflicting lines that constitute the life and becoming of the double agent. In particular, it can be drawn on to show how this subject both is captured by the transparent norms and limits of the international state system and effectively transgresses those limits. In this way, rather than upholding a dichotomy of secrecy and transparency as two separable sides of the international system, the double agent emerges as a disruptive figure calling for its deconstruction.

Die vorligende Arbeit befasst sich mit den Kommunikationsmitteln, welche in den internationalen Beziehungen Ägypten und den Großstaaten des Vorderasiens wie Hatti, Assur, Babylonien und Mitanni sowie anderen Staaten wie Arzawa und Alasia in der späten Bronzezeit nachzuweisen sind; gemeint ist der Zeitraum ca. 1450 bis 1200 v. Chr. Diese Periode wird häufig als die Zeit derinternationalen Diplomatie im Vorderen Orient bezeichnet, ist sie doch durch die guten internationalen Beziehungen zwischen Ägypten und den Statten Vorderasiens gekennzeichnet, die vielfach durch politische Heiraten gefördert und durch Vertragsschüssel gesichert wurden. Diese Periode, die vor allem ind den Literature auch amarna-Zeit genannt wird, beginnt mit der Regierungszeit Amenophis III. und endet mit der 18. Dynastie in Ägypten. ; This work deals with the means of communications in the late Bronze Age, which characterized the international relationships between Egypt and the great States of the ancient near east such as Hatti, Assur, Babylon and Mitanni as well as the other countries including Arzawa and Alasia. It covers the periode from ca. 1450 to 1200 B. c. This Periode is regarded as the era of the international diplomacy and known also as the Amarna Age.