8 ms·
The spy with no name
- donretag 10y agoFun read. I must admit, I would have never predicted the ending. Amazing if it turns out to be true.
- Lordarminius 10y agoYeah it reads like a Leclair novel. The spy was probably burned from the beginning; an informant could have warned the Britsh(?) of his coming deployment and they in turn set the 'mother' on him.
- blinddev 10y agoThe fact that the real Erwin van Haarlem seemingly vanished is suspicious. I would assume you would only want to assign an identity of someone who is known to be dead, yet the orphanage apparently sent many letters to the mother. Assuming that's true, of course.
- Lordarminius 10y agoI assume he may have died later in life, maybe late childhood
- pvitz 10y agoSpoiler: The real one was adopted and met Johanna later. Source: The story can be found on Kindle Singles, but the BBC article contains basically everything interesting already.
- sulam 10y agoSo why weren't there two of them? Or were there and it never became an issue?
- pvitz 10y agoThe real one got adopted when he was four years old and his new parents "raised him as their own." He found out about the adoption a long time later. Therefore, it is safe to assume that he also had a different name.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- JoeDaDude 10y agoThe means of receiving orders from his superiors, via shortwave transmission of a code consisting of numbers, has been in use for decades by spy agencies from around the world. Radio enthusiasts have been listening to these stations since the end of World War II. http://www.spynumbers.com/ http://www.spynumbers.com/ http://priyom.org/number-stations http://priyom.org/number-stations http://www.numbers-stations.com/ http://www.numbers-stations.com/ http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24910397 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24910397
- quirkafleeg 10y agohttp://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet%20project/ http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20conet%20project/
- danielvf 10y agoEven more interesting is that old radio receivers would give off faint sidebands when listening. This, you could drive around with the right gear and find radios listening to a numbers station. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheterodyne_receiver https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheterodyne_receiver
- keithpeter 10y agoDo you mean that you could tune into the local oscillator in the spy's receiver that would be displaced from the transmitted frequency by the value of the intermediate frequency? E.g. number station on 6000Khz and IF 465KHz so local oscillator 6465KHz? What happened when receivers went over to up-conversion and frequency synthesis?
- MarcusBrutus 10y agoThe story doesn't explain how a spy working as a waiter, purchase manager or "artist" can gain access to military secrets.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bfuller 10y agoExtortion, blackmail, etc
- MarcusBrutus 10y agoFor a man, a brothel operator, a private detective, or a drugs purveyor would make more sense for blackmail. How would a waiter in a nondescript location gain access to information that would allow him to blackmail? It's not like the hotel was placed near a military base or was frequented by diplomats or generals. Not to mention placing tapping devices in the Queen's furniture. The story, as presented, does not compute.
- swatkat 10y ago>>>> Not to mention placing tapping devices in the Queen's furniture. They didn't actually placed tapping devices in the Queen's furniture. From the article: One of his first ideas was to try planting listening devices in the Queen's furniture, he recalls, though he and his bosses realised it was technically unrealistic.
- quirkafleeg 10y agoI think he knows that, but that part you quoted didn't make sense to him, since how would Van Haarlem even be in a position to access the Queen's furniture, merely working down the road from Buckingham Palace? (At least that's what I thought when reading it anyway.)
- 10y ago