The Czech Spy Who Stole a Son | Blue Eyes
6/9/202638 min
It’s the mid-1980s and the Czechoslovak spy living posing as Erwin van Haarlem has spent years convincing the mother of the real Erwin that he is her long-lost son. Now his deception faces a new threat: Britain’s Security Service MI5 are on his tail.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsEmilia Fox· Host0:00
Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of The Spy Who ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. [dramatic music] 1986, Hainault Forest, London. Vaclav Jelinek pins a sheet of A4 paper to the trunk of a beech tree. It features a blurred photograph of a cat and the word missing. Jelinek, however, has not lost a pet. Rather, this poster is a signal to his handlers. The description of the cat, the phone number, even the punctuation, all of it is code to be collected and deciphered. To minimize the risk of detection, Jelinek avoids direct contact with his spymasters. Instead, messages travel back and forth through signals like this one, hidden in plain sight, but plausibly deniable. He picks up the bag of wild mushrooms on the ground by his feet and heads deeper into the forest. Mushroom picking provides a convenient excuse for his regular visits here. As a bonus, it also makes a change from the rubbery tinned mushrooms the British insist on serving, like Second World War rationing never went away. Jelinek spots a porcini pushing through the exposed roots of