Business | The CEO who loved me

Spies often use businesses as cover

It can end in tears

ESPIONAGE AND business have long been entangled. In “Live and Let Die”, Ian Fleming’s second novel, James Bond masquerades as a businessman working for Universal Export, a flimsy front company for MI6 that occupies a “big, grey building near Regent’s Park”. In “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, published almost a decade later, the game is up. “As cover, solid cover, Universal was ‘brûlé’ with the pros”, rues Bond. “It had been in use too long. All the secret services in the world had penetrated it by now. Obviously Blofeld knew all about it.”

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The CEO who loved me”

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