We meet the protagonist of this trueto-life spy thriller in a suitably shadowy location. It is a late autumn afternoon in 1934 and Walter Bell, “a tall young man with a slight stoop”, is making his way along a cold and seemingly deserted road near Westminster in London. It was here that Bell was recruited into the service of MI6 to begin his career as an Intelligence agent. Conscious of the threat of Nazism, and wanting to do something about it, he was ready for an approach from British Intelligence services.
In his narrative, author Jimmy Burns unravels the life of the spy with whom he was personally acquainted and who became a key player in the emerging Intelligence relationship between Britain and America before, during and immediately after the Second World War. Bell’s first-hand experience of Germany and Austria during the 1930s forged his views on Europe and made working for British Intelligence an attractive career proposition. He harboured no doubts that northern Europe’s turbulent ideological battles were a prologue to another war.