The Woman Who Rescued Orwell | Historical
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Disclaimer, this episode contains descriptions of violence. This is True Spies, the podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time. Week by week, you'll hear the true stories behind the operations that have shaped the world we live in. You'll meet the people who live life undercover. What do they know?

What are their skills? And what would you do in their position? I'm Rhianna Needs, and this is True Spies from Spyscape Studios. She doesn't go underground. She doesn't hide. And because she thinks that as soon as he comes back, he will be arrested and thrown into prison. And she's trying to find a way to warn him or to save him. So she stays hidden.

The Woman Who Rescued Orwell. It's April 1937. A tall, thin woman sits in the lobby of a large hotel in central Barcelona. All around her, people are watching each other intently. She is sitting upright. Trying to look as casual and inconspicuous as she can, she is aware of every single person coming and going.

Eileen was incredibly clever in very many ways. She was a fantastic writer and she was a wonderful listener and observer of people. The woman sitting motionless is Eileen O'Shaughnessy. Her heart is racing. She's no longer sure if she's been there for six hours, an entire day or a number of weeks. The police stomp in and out of the hotel, not particularly picky about who they arrest.

Despite the fear she feels, she makes sure her fingers sit perfectly still in her lap. Her eyes are fixed on the entrance. She's looking for one face in particular, that of her husband, the writer George Orwell.

And what's happening is that police are marching into the hotel and arresting people and taking them away to prisons. And then the prisons all got full. And then the Stalinists basically commandeered a whole lot of quite big villas and turned them into prisons. So you would end up in a basement somewhere where no one could find you.

You're hearing the voice of Anna Funder, the author of Stasi Land, which delves into the world of the East German secret police during the Cold War. Her latest book is called Wifedom. It's about George Orwell's wife, Eileen, and it explores the life of a woman who follows her husband to Spain, only to be caught in a similarly troubled world, one of arrests, executions and espionage.

Wifedom explores who Eileen O'Shaughnessy was, who she might have been, and how she shaped Orwell's life.

I have always been really interested in Orwell and all my books are about how power is used or misused and how ordinary people resist it. Kind of extraordinary people, actually. I read my way through his collected essays and journalism and letters. And after I'd finished this kind of Orwell extravaganza, I came across six letters from his first wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy. And these letters were extraordinary.

According to Anna, Orwell's biographers are completely disinterested in Eileen, nor do they seem to care why he purposely wrote her out of his works.

Some critics hint at how his writing flourished in her presence. And I just thought, well, perhaps from the point of view of the woman who was making those conditions, there's a different story to be told. Anna will help us to paint a picture of who Eileen was, how she traveled to Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, and what she endured trying to ensure her husband's safety. First, we need to go to a party in Hampstead, North London.

where psychologists, mature students, university staff and magazine editors are all mingling. It's 1935.

Two slim men talk while leaning awkwardly against a fireplace, smoking and paying little attention to the crowd. Orwell is one of them. In fact, it is his flatmate, Rosalind Obermeyer, who is throwing the party. Orwell is dressed rather drably. He is not the picture of a debonair gentleman, nor a particularly good catch.

And in walks Eileen O'Shaughnessy, a well-educated young woman with an English degree from Oxford University. She is 29 years old. Orwell really, I think, fell in love almost at first sight at that party with Eileen. So at the end of the night, he wanted to walk Eileen and Lydia to the bus stop, which he did. And then he came back to the flat and said to Rosalind as they were clearing things up,

That is the girl I want to marry. Eileen's family and friends are far from enraptured with the match. But Eileen had already decided to accept the first proposal she received if she wasn't married by the time she was 30 years old. Orwell had timed things perfectly. The couple married in June 1936. Days after the wedding, Eileen writes to her best friend Nora from Orwell's family home.

And she says, you know, I like it here with the in-laws, even though the house is very small, which I have to say it is. But I think the family on the whole are fun and they're on my side. In fact, the mother, Ida, took me aside on the wedding day and said I'd be a brave girl if I knew what I was in for. And Avril, the sister, said, well, obviously she doesn't know what she's in for or she wouldn't be here.

What she's in for is hard graft. The couple set up home in a miniscule village in Kent called Wallington. Away from his family, her family and her best friend, they move into a tiny cottage. The newlyweds are well and truly isolated.

As the summer draws to a close and the cold begins to creep in, she notices the outdoor latrine is clogged. Orwell is unwell, so it's down to her to fix the situation. In fact, their new home, belonging to Orwell's aunt, is nothing short of dilapidated. The roof leaks, the wind rattles through the windows, and there is no electricity. Eileen smokes constantly in an effort to keep warm.

The worst part about living in Wallington, however, seems to be how she is unable to get away. And that might be the tougher pill to swallow.

And Eileen hasn't been able to visit Nora. At the end of this first letter, she says, "I would love to come and see you, but every time I leave, and if I'm planning to leave and George has notice of the fact he gets something, he falls ill because he had such terrible lungs, before I go so that I can't leave. And if I leave and he has no notice of the fact, he gets something as soon as I've gone and I have to come back."

And I think she's both apologizing for not having been able to visit Nora, but also letting her know that she is aware that there is a kind of controlling force that is going to keep her at home and with Orwell.

Orwell has always wanted to live in the countryside, and Eileen's presence, opening a small shop from the cottage for them to make a meagre income, caring for the goats and chickens and running the house, enables him to write prolifically. While he bashes out his prose on the typewriter upstairs, Eileen keeps him fed and watered. There is a gentle rhythm to their new life, but Orwell has been daydreaming out of the frost-covered windows upstairs.

Eileen looks up. Her husband tells her he is going to Spain. His announcement doesn't surprise her. Since the end of the First World War in 1918, the Western world had been in an apprehensive state of peace. Europe had been devastated by the destruction of war. During this lull in the bloody first half of the 20th century, the continent is trying to get back on its feet. The peace always seems fragile.

In July 1936, just after Orwell and Eileen had married, trouble began to rumble at the heart of the Spanish government. In February of the same year, the left-wing coalition had come to power in the latest in a series of elections. Despite the democratic process, millions of Spaniards are unhappy. There is a rift in the country as many factions of the army decide they don't want the coalition running the country.

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And to show your support for the show, that's Talkspace.com slash spies, code SPACE80. July 18th, 1936. The Spanish government, known as the Spanish Second Republic, is unaware of any threat. But General Francisco Franco, along with various army officers, are attempting a military coup. The streets run with blood.

Franco manages to take many traditionally conservative areas and is surprised by the vehement pushback in many areas in Spain. While the coup fails to overthrow the government, it succeeds in splitting the country in two: nationalists versus republicans, right versus left. Spain is fractured, and by November, Madrid is under siege.

And at this time in Europe, obviously, Nazi Germany exists and Hitler is running that fascist regime. Mussolini is running a fascist regime in Italy. And it looks as if Spain might also fall to fascism. And Britain and France didn't want to go and help. This is a sort of powder keg situation. So many young people, all sorts of people, writers and fighters, went to Spain to help.

Against this backdrop, Eileen and Orwell both want to be of service. Not simply by writing strongly worded letters or political polemics, but through real action. Eileen continues to scrub dirt from the potatoes that she's grown in the garden. She asks how soon he is going. He lights a cigarette and tells her, as soon as he can. Eileen stiffens.

He does not say, come with me, nor does he ask her if she'll be okay on her own. He wanted to go and fight. He wanted to kill fascists and he wanted to write about it. And that was the sort of political background to the beginning of this relationship. They have been married for a mere six months. And then off he goes. Eileen looks out of the kitchen window.

It's already dark, and there's very little she can see out there. She knows how to run the house on her own, but usually there is a soft tapping from the upstairs. Now there is silence. She is completely alone. She imagines the winter months stretching out ahead of her, and reaches for a cigarette.

They leave her on her own and she is in this cottage which has no electricity, one cold tap indoors, an outdoor loo, a primitive kind of gas cooker. The next few weeks pass slowly. The air in the cottage is biting. Both her husband and adventure lie 900 miles away. At least she has her imagination to lean on as she does the daily chores.

And she's looking after chickens and goats, who she's named and who all have personalities, and she thinks that she might write a book about them if she can find any time. She is an excellent writer, but there is no time to write a book while running the house. Is this really what she faces for the entire winter? But she wasn't happy to be left behind. She would dearly have loved to have gone to Spain as well. Barcelona, February 1937.

Eileen has left the bleak cottage behind her. Orwell's aunt is holding the fort. It seems a world away now she's here. She is in Spain and she's here to work. Her new job is working at the headquarters of the International Labour Party, ILP, where she's secretary to the director of the ILP, John McNair.

The party is affiliated with the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, known as the POUM in Spain. Aligned to the political thought of Leon Trotsky, who's very much persona non grata in Stalin's USSR, this is the party that Orwell is fighting for on the front lines. The office is full of men hurrying about, organizing reports.

The air is charged with optimism. Eileen feels a ripple of excitement run down her spine.

This is somewhere she can make a difference. She was really at the centre of the political action there. She lived at the Hotel Continental and worked 100 yards down the street in another hotel where the ILP office was. Everybody likes Eileen. She is invaluable and the American economist Charles Orr spots her writing talent. He enlists her to produce the party's newsletter and work on propaganda with him.

He said, compared to all the grifters and chancers and spies and operatives and so on who came through our office, Eileen, he said, was a superior person. Eileen spends most of her time at the office doing everything she can. She arranges papers, food and clothing for the men fighting at the front and even lends her boss, John McNair, money. The ILP is out of funds. Seeing the desperation, she goes above and beyond to get help.

And she organized for her sister-in-law, her brother's wife who was a doctor, Gwen, to drive the big family car full of medicine and medical supplies from London to Barcelona because they didn't have enough medical supplies. The first signs of spring can be seen in the streets. Gwen has arrived in Spain, accompanied by a young man called David Wicks. Eileen greets him warmly as he tells her he is a language teacher.

He asks how he can be of service, and she tells him to come to the office with her. The rest of the office welcomes him into the fold without hesitation. Wicks grins. He casually takes a seat close to Eileen, and he's not the only one that wants to befriend her. A couple of weeks later, a clean-cut Italian man turns up at the office.

He walks in and moves about the place with total ease. Eileen is typing in her usual spot. His eyes twinkle as he sees her look up, and he stalks gracefully towards her. The young man is called Giorgio Tioli. He is charming and knows how to disarm her.

In fact, he is so charismatic that Eileen does not have a moment to stop and think how convenient it is that they have so much in common. Then again, everyone around her is trusting these men. Why shouldn't she? She's having quite a good time because I think compared to the goats and chickens, it's very interesting. She's using her personal and political skills and there are interesting people that she's working with. But she becomes aware that there are

are almost certainly people spying who are masquerading as, who knows what, translators or journalists, friends coming in and out of the office. So it is an atmosphere in which she is aware that there are spies in this political office, although she doesn't know who they are. Tioli decides to stay at the Hotel Continental and installs himself in the bedroom directly next door to Eileen.

While new faces are becoming embedded in the office, Orwell remains at the front. He is stationed in the mountains of Aragon, northeastern Spain, and spends most of his time scribbling notes for his book in the trenches. He's desperate for some action.

And he's immensely bored. And he really is so bored that he often sticks his head above the trench or the parapet when he's on guard duty. Almost it seems like in an effort to find a bullet to hit him. Action is something that Eileen does not need to seek out.

She's in this exciting and interesting job, which also has an undercurrent of potential betrayal and political intrigue and mortal danger, really. She thinks about her husband often and misses him dearly. Besides, she wants to see the battlefront for herself. They count the days. It has been over 100 since they've been together.

By mid-March, she convinces Orwell's commander to take her to the fighting. His name is Georges Copp, and he's extremely fond of her. How can he refuse? The car has been bumping along the road for hours. As she gets out, she gags. The stench of unwashed men hits her as she gets out of the car. Giorgio Tioli is on the trip too. Flanked by him and Orwell, she walks through the trenches.

She lights a cigarette and passes one to her husband. They smoke companionably to cover the smell. How close is that gun? Ducking in the trenches, she grins at her husband. This is what it's all about. She feels no fear. There is a huge sense of camaraderie. The only thing she feels is exhilaration. She relishes the adventure.

As she goes to sleep under the stars, reunited with Orwell, she thinks about what she can do to help the cause. It's now the end of March. Aileen is back in Barcelona, back to receiving Orwell's notes, delivered by Commander Kopp when he returns to the city. While she gathers supplies for men at the front, she thinks about what has changed since she got back.

Pretty quickly in Spain, the situation turns sour because it looks as if there's a left-wing revolution in Catalonia, which is being supported by communist Russia and to a much lesser extent by Mexico, but basically by Russia sending, you know, men and munitions and so on. But actually, Stalin didn't want any revolution to happen anywhere that he didn't control. And he thought this was a sort of quasi-trop.

Ever the control freak, Stalin had been keeping his eye on Spain. He'd been sending weapons and tanks to his supporters in order to reinforce his regime, as well as infiltrating the highly trained national police, the assault guards. But he wouldn't stomach a revolution that didn't adhere to his brand of authoritarian communism.

Mere days after she returns from the front, she can feel something stagnant in the air. There are signs that the egalitarian revolution is in trouble. The Republic and its various leftist groups seem at odds with one another. Something is simmering, and it's not something that she can escape.

Her boss, John McNair, is arrested one evening. He manages to make a fuss of being British and is released. But the night in jail is a warning. This is a new world. There are people coming and going the whole time. New faces. Friends of friends. The constant flow of men that wafts through the office is also at the hotel. Faces that she sees again and again. They seem to be on every corner.

She sees them when she closes her eyes at night. I think in the sort of, in a kind of pressure cooker atmosphere of this office, where there are very passionately engaged anti-fascists, and then there are however charming or educated or attentive undercover Stalinist spies, an atmosphere of war and pressure and tension would be very hard to distinguish friendship or

or love even from spying. And, you know, maybe one was cover for the other. In April 1937, a very close friend of Orwell's arrives at her office. His name is Richard Rees.

Sir Richard Rees. He's back from the front where he has been driving ambulances. And he comes up the flights of stairs to her office and finds her in a very strange mental state, he said. She seemed distracted and not at all like herself. And he wants to have lunch with her and she won't. And then she takes him outside of the office.

and explains to him that there are spies everywhere. His account of it was she told him that she was trying to protect him because he would be in danger if he was seen having lunch with her. Her hands are shaking. She can think of nothing worse than dear Richard being embroiled in something because he has been seen with her. And Richard Rees said he thought that that was the first time in his life that he had seen someone suffering what he called political terror.

She knows the risk she poses to her friends, and the terror of not knowing who to trust is very real. While she trusts Richard, can she say the same for her inner circle? She heads back to the hotel, trying to keep alert whilst looking nonchalant. Without thinking twice, Eileen gets up and heads back to the office the next morning. Everyone is carrying on, including John McNair and Charles Orr, even though Stalinists have infiltrated the government and the police forces.

Mistrust and cynicism breed in the streets. She would have felt it, but she wouldn't have been able to identify who exactly was a spy in the office. Eileen looks up from her desk. Giorgio Tioli is trying to get her attention.

He introduces her to a man called David Crook. This man has three bullet wounds to the leg and tells them about his adventures at the front. Like many of the men that have arrived before, he says he's a journalist. He wants to be part of the office in his capacity as a war reporter. As the group gathers to welcome him, they decide it's time for lunch. Eileen invites him to accompany them. He says he'll stay behind. The place is now deserted.

David Crook takes his pick of the files and begins to gather as many as he can carry. He's not there to report on the war. He got all the files that he wanted, took them out of the office and around the corner to a Stalinist kind of hideout office where they were all photographed and then put them back.

Two weeks later, and nobody is any the wiser. Well, how could they be? It's not uncommon for one or two of them to stay back while the others enjoy a leisurely lunch. It's Monday, the 3rd of May, 1937, and Eileen and John McNair are the only ones in at the ILP's headquarters. John bursts out of his office.

He tells her that the cafe mocha next door has been taken. The assault guards, who are Spanish kind of military police, but they are being controlled by Stalinists, and they besieged themselves kind of into this cafe. By barricading themselves into the cafe, the Stalinist-controlled police are now directly next door to the office.

Barcelona is gripped by violence. Passers-by, leftist groups and the Stalinist forces are all now engaged in a bloody brawl. Men that were previously fighting alongside each other are out for each other's blood. Aileen dives under the desk. She tries to gather her notes in between ducking for cover.

hurriedly she takes what she can what is most incriminating and what must she save she snatches the men's passports along with her own from the safe and heads back to the hotel it has been declared neutral ground although even that could be a farce she thinks of orwell as she arrives he is on leave when the street fighting begins but where exactly is he

He ends up kind of going underground in order to be safe and sleeping in the streets, as it were, in order to escape what's happening. And what's happening is that police are marching into the hotel and arresting people and taking them away to prisons. Two days after the attack, the 5th of May, Eileen sits in her usual spot in the hotel. She realizes that things have changed for good.

The lawlessness on the streets is unprecedented. An ashen-faced John greets Eileen. She tells John not to speak so quietly, it will seem suspicious. He winces and tells her that the P.O.U.M. is going to be outlawed and asks her whether they should still go to the office. She pauses. What is the right answer? If she says yes and they are caught there, will it be her fault? Why does she need to make the call?

Hell, it's as safe a place as any. Aileen accompanies John to the office where they barricade themselves in and prepare for a raid. Outside, there is total chaos. Murder and mayhem run down the streets of Barcelona as tensions between Spain's leftist groups build to a frenzy.

The atmosphere in Spain was very dangerous for Aileen. You know, she's clearly experiencing political terror and her friends and colleagues and people in the hotel are disappearing without trace from one night to another. Rumors abound of people being killed. People are being killed. There are battles in the streets. She knows that whoever it is has been reporting back to the Stalinist forces from her office, knows everything about her.

And Orwell isn't there. It's the 24th of May, 1937. Another Monday. Not that the days of the week mean much anymore. The street fighting has died down, but it has left an eerie quiet hanging in the air. Eileen inhales her cigarette deeply and turns over the last pages of Orwell's notes from the front.

She has just returned from his bedside. He was shot, but his injury was treatable. After accompanying him from one hospital to the next, she went back to Barcelona alone. As she organizes his latest notes, she drafts a concise telegram to tell his family that he is okay. Aileen feels composed and thinks things over. It is clear that the next knock on the door could be for her. She knows they have to get home.

He's injured at this point and he's, you know, having very uncomfortable time in the backs of trucks and stuff, trying to get back to the medical officer at the front to get the stamp that he needs in his documents to be discharged. But meanwhile, she is living in this epicenter of Stalinist terror and murder.

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David Wicks has left a letter at the office resigning. He is a Stalinist spy who has been betraying them all. The rest of her friends, they are all terrified. The POUM had been shunned by the Spanish Republic. And on the 16th of June, 1937, the governmental powers went a step further and officially outlawed the party.

It's a balmy day in the city and Aileen arrives at her favourite lunch spot along with her friend Lois, Charles Orr's wife. They're both tense. Lois is going underground with Charles. The Spanish government has declared them all to be traitors. There are warrants out for their arrests alongside Aileen's. Lois begs Aileen to come with her. It's a tempting offer but what about Orwell?

She said of him once to a friend, George has a remarkable political simplicity. So part of her protecting him is perhaps because she recognized that he didn't know all that she knew about the situation. He didn't have the same kind of political antenna for what was going on. I mean, he'd been at the front. He hadn't been at the

at the epicenter of things as she had. So whether she puts him above her own self or whether she just thinks, I'm really well informed, he's not, I know what I need to do, I need to help him and I can save him because he can't save himself. Eileen refuses to hide.

Giorgio overhears the conversation as he joins the two women for lunch and tries to steer the conversation back to being arrested. He asks them what they would want brought to them in prison if that were to happen. Eileen blinks. Lois closes her eyes and answers, peaches. And Eileen picks toothbrush. It's an odd question, even for Giorgio.

It's a new day, and Eileen is back in the hotel by herself, right where we started this episode. Her friends have all disappeared, as best they can, but she remains. Her skin is pale, her gaze fixed on the hotel door, and anxiety pulses through her veins. She sits in the lobby, waiting for Orwell to return with his discharge papers. Her gaze does not move from the door.

She doesn't go underground. She doesn't hide. And because she thinks that as soon as Orwell comes back, he will be arrested and thrown into prison. And she's trying to find a way to warn him or to save him. So she stays. The police charge up to a man on the table next to her, grab him roughly and bundle him out of the door.

Her heart races and she tries to focus on looking normal, breathing evenly and drawing no attention to herself. She is lit up like everybody to see in the lobby of the hotel waiting for him to get back so that as soon as he pushes his ragged scarecrow frame through the doors of the Hotel Continental, her only plan is I'm going to leap up and turn him out the door again to keep him safe and put him back in the streets.

And then there he is. Eileen jumps up as discreetly and quickly as she can manage. She stands up, apparently very calmly, walks over to him, puts her arm around his neck and kind of whispers in his ear, get out. And he has no idea what's happening. She says, get out of here. And so she takes him out of the hotel and makes him go underground. She has succeeded in keeping her husband safe for one more night.

She cannot say the same for her friends. John McNair is sleeping rough, and she has not heard from him. Charles and Lois have been arrested. Giorgio is the only one, other than Eileen, who has remained untouchable.

When Charles and Lois were arrested, mostly people who were arrested, you had no idea where they were and no way of finding out where they were. But mysteriously, Peaches arrived at the prison, a converted bourgeois villa, where Lois was being held. So it looks as if Giorgio Tioli was really on the inside of things and a spy and was able to find out where she was and get her Peaches. At least he'd kept his word.

With her friends in prison or on the run, and having sent her husband to sleep rough, it's back to being just her, alone. All night, Eileen has lain awake. There have been screams from across the street and shouting from the floor above. It's impossible to sleep. As dawn arrives, her worst fear comes true. Six strapping policemen charge into her room.

Eileen stays as still as she can. She sits like a bird trapped in a cage. There is nowhere for her to go. The men crash about the place, throwing books into bags and rifling through every drawer. They march from the bedroom through to the bathroom. She sits in bed and waits. She tries to still her breath. She's the only person in the room that knows what lies beneath her.

She's had the foresight to save his manuscript and to sit on the passports and checkbook and put them under the mattress and stay put. It's pretty bold. They need no excuse to arrest her. After two long hours, the policemen leave. They do not ask her to move before they go. The bed remains undisturbed.

What kind of courage, what kind of calm, what kind of extraordinary interpersonal intelligence did she have not to annoy those men for two hours so that they would have no excuse to get her out of bed and not to reveal, like a hen sitting on precious eggs, that she has got those extremely important documents, the only things that you have to have in order to get out of there under the mattress. That was too close a call.

While Eileen is bold, she is also incredibly astute. She has resisted going underground. She has kept Orwell's incriminating papers. And she has sat atop the only documents that will guarantee their passage home. She knows that her luck is not infinite.

Defiantly, she rises from the bed. Taking all of the passports and carefully looking through to check she has them all, she leaves her hotel room. Her destination is the police headquarters, most likely where the six men who raided her room got their orders. There is no way out of Spain without exit visas and without three stamps in their passports. The risk is extraordinary and the likelihood of success is minute.

Her nerves are indescribable. Somehow, as before, she manages to still the tremor in her heart and pass over the passports with perfectly still hands. Her calm demeanor speaks for itself, and her sure presence holds a weight of its own. Somehow, she does not raise suspicion.

Aileen had to take their passports to the headquarters of the police whilst people like her are being arrested everywhere and go in and get a stamp from the police prefecture, which would have been a terrifying thing to do. And she did it. So she really saved Orwell's life and she got them out of Spain.

Thanks to Eileen's astonishing courage in the face of the Stalinist purge, she managed to return to London with her husband. It does look as if she thought of his safety above her own. I think that she was extraordinarily brave and behaved unbelievably courageously and selflessly in Spain.

In the years that followed their homecoming, she played a pivotal role in typing up and encouraging Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's memoir of the Spanish Civil War and his experience fighting with the POUM. She herself was front and center of the organization he fought for and in mortal danger on a daily basis. While he was focused on the filth and fatigue in the trenches and often bored, his wife was at the center of the action.

Many critics say that she shaped his writing and doubt that Animal Farm would ever have been created without her. Eileen and Orwell would sit in bed laughing about the characters and talking through the narrative together. Eileen had a great wit and an eye for characterization. It was a totally original work and stood apart from what he had previously written.

Eileen died less than a decade after they returned from Spain, after working for the Ministry of Information and Ministry of Food during the Second World War, and nurturing her husband's talent throughout her lifetime. It was not uncommon for male authors to brush over the impact of their wives on their work. Eileen's influence on Orwell's writing and life remains a huge mystery, as he wrote her out of his story.

I'm Rhiannon Needs. Join me next week for another liaison with true spies. Disclaimer. The views expressed in this podcast are those of the subject. These stories are told from their perspective and their authenticity should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

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Sometimes he did have to do things like go and see old friends and beg for money. And of course, Peters and the other checker agents were watching for him to do just that. It is the dead of night and he's decided it is worth the risk. He enters the block of flats. And as he was creeping up the stairs, he actually heard voices above. The checker. Paul freezes.

His heart thuds, and he swears the men must be able to hear it from the floor above. Anxiously, he turns around. As he hurries out of the building, he trips. Thud! The Bolsheviks swing around and give chase. Before he is out, a hulking great hand nabs him by the collar. A Cheka officer. He pushes him against the wall and presses a revolver to his temple.

True Spies from Spyscape Studios. Search for True Spies wherever you get your podcasts.