The Spy Disarmed By Love

The bestowal of the Liebster Blog Award sailed across the internet seas from two fantastic friends: 

KATIE DODGE & MISSI MORRIS. Zip on over to their blogs and show them some liebstership.

Katie's is Katie on Fiction at katieonfiction.blogspot.com and 

Missi's is Whimsical Writing at whimsicalwriting.blogspot.com

So they tell me  Liebster means Friend in German. And even more it means— Favorite,  Beloved,  Dearest,  Sweetheart. A person loved by another person.

For some reason the thought of a spy love story popped in my head. Maybe because a spy book was sitting on my nightstand at the very moment I read about my award. Huh.

Sooooooo . . . . 

Voila! A spy love story. (Bits of it, that it.)

From the book GREAT TRUE SPY STORIES, edited by Allen Dulles comes a tale called: 

Assassin Disarmed By Love 

by John L. Steele

Pop some popcorn, turn off the lights, get all comfy and read some of the details of this fascinating Liebster story.

5 − 4 − 3 − 2 − 1  ROLL 'EM!

THE PROJECTOR IS NOW ROLLING BEHIND YONDER WINDOW.

SPY: Bogdan Nikolayevich Stashinskiy

HIRED BY: Soviet Intelligence Service

RUNDOWN: 
   "It was in great measure Stashinskiy's love for his German wife which made him break away from the Soviets, the record of his trial in Germany revealed that there was also a strong element of moral revulsion in Stashinskiy against his employers . . ."


SKIPPING, SKIPPING TO HERE: 
     "The story of his rise and fall elicits no sympathy—but it is a weird and fascinating case in the recent history of international intelligence. It also offers testimony that the oldest of spy thriller cliches—spy meets girl, spy falls in love, spy gets in a miserable jam—is very much part of the flesh and blood business of espionage."


NOW THIS: 
   "Unlike previous pseudonyms he had been given, his new one—Josef Lehmann—carried a complete biography. From June to October 1954 Stashinskiy spent his time absorbing the details of the life of this fictitious character. He visited every locality and address that was part of the Lehmann legend; he even learned the routine of a job in a sugar beet factory where Lehmann supposedly worked as a boy. After this painstaking preparation Stashinskiy was finally turned loose in East Germany to assume the identity of Josef Lehmann."


MOVE IN STEALTH MODE TO THIS NEXT INFO:
     "At the Tanz Casino in East Berlin he met a girl named Inge Pohl. He asked her to dance and rather suddenly Josef Lehmann had become entangled in a major nonespionage case: love."

USE THIS SPY STORY AS AN IDEA FOR A BOOK, OR A DETAIL FOR A CHARACTER, OR INSPIRATION FOR A SCENE. PLAY WITH IT - SEE WHAT YOU COME UP WITH. STORIES LIKE THIS CAN BE USED IN ANY TYPE OF FICTION — JUST BE CREATIVE WITH THE DETAILS, THE EMOTIONS, THE PEOPLE, THE SETTING, ETC, AND VOILA! 

FANTASTIC FICTION!

And now, in accepting this Liebster Blog Award, I need to choose 5 bloggers who have less than 200 followers so we can show some love to them. 

My computer is being glitchy so I have no idea how many followers my super blogger friends have since the followers don't show up when I go to most people's blogs. 

Hey, I know! How about the first five people who tell me in the comments that they have less then 200 followers can have the Liebster Award! 

ESPY THE SPY.  

LOVE THE SPY.  

SPY THE LOVE.