The Therapy Zone

   

The Spy Who Was Recruited........

........ Into the banking service!

   Well that's how Alec Leamas was recruited, into the banking service. He was the banker for many agents around the world, but especially in Western Germany during the cold war. Leamas would take on a false name, and in West Germany, mainly Berlin, set up a bank account in two false names, one his, and the other used by an agent. Leamas would then deposit a sum of monies into the account, after which the agent for whom the money was intended would use his or her false name to withdraw the said monies from that account using his or her false name for that bank account.

   You many recall how during ‘the Prisoner’ episode ‘Once Upon A Time,’ it was demonstrated how Number 6 was interviewed by the Managing Director, and recruited to go and work in a bank. Such a man with his talents would not be wasted in licking stamps. But he was just right, just right for them, and would be with them until death do us part. The bank was a cover of course, a cover for secret work. Perhaps the kind of work to which Alec Leamas was first recruited into, when he went working for a bank, as noted in John le Carrie's novel ‘The Spy Who Came In From the Cold,’ and later adapted into a film in 1965 starring Richar Burton.

Brrrrrr, it's cold out there!

 The Spy Who Came In From the Cold

     What happens to a spy who comes in from the cold, who isn't gassed and not abducted to the village? They are left out in a different cold just as Callan, a reluctant killer who worked for a shadowy department of Special Branch and Alec Leamas a spy who spent much of his time in both east and west Germany. Callan ended up working as a clerk for a measly few £'s a week. While Alec Leamas demonstrated what happens to spies who aren't at all important and refuse to go back into the cold. They are in fact left "out in the cold" in the real and depressing world by their previous employers, the next stop being the labour exchange, and a job in a library for £11. 10 shillings a week. That would be a pay-cut of about £18. 10 shillings.

Why don't you defect?