(Old City Gate, Seoul.)

I threw some money on the bar and we stumbled out; one young Spook, one active Mata Hari, and the last flower of the Empire singing “Waltzing Matilda.” Mata looked embarrassed. There was a fortuitous cab waiting in front.  We sped through the evening streets past the brooding bulk of Namsan Mountain where the Tower poked up at the bright stars.  Within minutes we were piling out at the Shilla. The KCIA now looked resigned to the affair and her English improved.
 
I suppose it is possible that she was just a hooker, and Jim was just a drunk, and I am just crazy. But that doesn’t explain Field Marshall Kesselring’s gilt baton, does it? The Nazi and the Irish connections. I’ll get to that part some time. But that part of the story went down in Japan.
 
That’s where the adventure got very strange indeed. Spooky, in fact.
 
See, Albert Kesselring married Luise Anna Pauline (Liny) Keyssler, the daughter of an apothecary from Bayreuth, in 1910. Although they honeymooned in Italy, the marriage was barren. In 1913 they adopted Rainer, the son of Albert’s second cousin Kurt Kesselring. He wound up as Deputy Chief of the German Intelligence Service- the BND.
 
More Spooks. And Jim never said that his wife was legitimate.
 
Copyright renewed 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
 
* The national Mapping and Imagery Agency was re-christened by my former Boss Lt Gen. Jim Clapper as “The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) during his tenure there

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