The Rolls-Royce raced along a road through a forest near Meaux, in northern France. It was October 1914, two months after the outbreak of the First World War.
Driving was Alastair Cumming, a 24-year-old intelligence officer.
Sitting next to him was his father, Mansfield Cumming, head of the UK's Secret Intelligence Service, who had come to France to see him. They were united not only by intelligence, but also by their love of high-speed cars.
Suddenly, a Rolls-Royce had a punctured wheel. The car pulled off the road, crashed into a tree and rolled over, pinching Mansfield's leg. His son was thrown out of the car.
Hearing the groan of his son, Mansfield tried to get out from under the rubble and crawl towards him, but despite his best efforts, he could not free his leg.
Then, pulling a penknife from his pocket, he began to hack at the tendons and bones until he chopped off his leg and freed himself. He crawled to where Alastair lay and covered his dying son with his coat. He was found some time later, lying unconscious, next to the body of his son.
This act of extraordinary courage, dedication and willingness to use all necessary, and even unpleasant, means to achieve an end was to become a legend of the secret service.
Indeed, to test the fervor of potential recruits, he put them to the test. During the conversation, he stuck a penknife or compasses into his wooden leg. If the candidate wavered, he rejected him with a simple wording: "Well, this is not the case for you."
When Commander Mansfield Smith-Cumming received a summons from the Admiralty in 1909 to form a new Secret Service Directorate, he was in charge of naval defense at Southampton. He retired from active naval service due to severe seasickness.
A fifty-year-old, short, stocky man, with a small mouth with sternly compressed lips, a stubborn chin and an eagle-eyed piercing gaze through a gilded monocle. At first glance, he seemed not the best candidate for such a job: he did not speak foreign languages, and spent the last ten years languishing in obscurity.
However, as a remarkable new book reveals, over the years he has built a solid Secret Intelligence Service for the UK, with a network of employees and agents around the world.
They will gather intelligence and advance British interests at all costs, even through assassinations.
Mansfield Cumming, became known as "K": he marked with this letter, written in green ink, all documents that he read. Initially, the service had a modest budget, and he himself worked in a tiny office.
However, he set about recruiting, including the writers Somerset Maugham and Compton Mackenzie.
His agents were adept at disguising themselves with elaborate disguises, and were always armed with a "swordstick," a walking cane that housed a blade.
Both Cumming and his officers soon found that money and sex tended to be the most effective incentives for informants.
When the threat of war with Germany loomed, an agent codenamed Walter Chrismas inspected German naval yards and reported on the testing of a new dreadnought (a powerful warship), the "astonishing speed" of new torpedo boats, and the ongoing construction of submarines.
Chrismas always insisted that his data had been collected by attractive young, corrupt women, probably prostitutes, with whom he met in a hotel room to exchange classified information.
The partnership between the two oldest professions, espionage and prostitution, will continue throughout the history of MI6.
When war broke out in August 1914, demand for Cumming's services increased. He is expanding his network of agents throughout Europe and Russia.
It is extremely important to know where the German troops are located, who is in command, what weapons. Many citizens in Belgium and Northern France risked their lives to provide detailed information on enemy troop movements by watching trains heading to the front.
One of Cumming's most successful agents was a French Jesuit, an Irish priest named O'Caffrey. In June 1915, he found two Zeppelin airships hidden in barns near Brussels that had bombed London a few days earlier, killing 7 and wounding 35 people. The British took revenge by bombing and destroying the airships.
As the war dragged on, the British began to worry that Russia would abandon the fight, which would allow 70 German divisions to be transferred to the Western Front.
While the tsar was at the front, Russia was ruled by the tsarina, who was subdued by the "holy man" Grigory Rasputin, an unscrupulous, power-hungry drunkard.
It was feared that he might convince her to make peace with Germany, which was her home country.
And so, in December 1916, three agents of Cumming in Russia began to liquidate Rasputin. This is one of the most brutal acts committed by the service to date.
One of the British agents, Oswald Reiner, together with some courtiers who hated Rasputin, lured him to a palace in Petrograd with the promise of an intimate date.
He was drunk, and then they began to torture, demanding to reveal the truth about his ties with Germany. Whatever he told them was not enough. His body was found in the river. An autopsy revealed that Rasputin had been severely beaten with a heavy rubber baton with lead, and his scrotum had been crushed. Then he was shot several times. Reiner probably fired the fatal fatal shot.
Less than a year later, the Bolsheviks came to power. When there was talk of peace in Russia, Cumming sent one of his experienced collaborators, the writer Somerset Maugham, who had previously been on secret assignments in Geneva, to head the mission in Russia.
The writer recalled: “Anyway, I had to go to Russia and try to keep the Russians in this war. I was insecure, accepting a position that required powerful abilities that I did not have."
“It is superfluous to tell the reader that I have deplorably failed in this matter. The new Bolshevik government agreed to an armistice with Germany in mid-December 1917, and peace negotiations began a week later.”
But Cumming wasn't used to giving up easily. When they talked about continuing the war, he allegedly ordered one of his agents to kill Stalin, who spoke out in favor of peace. The agent refused and was fired. Russia withdrew from the war at the end of the month.
One of Cumming's most dashing recruits was Paul Dukes, who was described by his co-workers as “the answer to prayer for the perfect spy” - courageous, smart, and handsome.
He became the lover of one of the women who was Lenin's confidant. This connection became a rich source of information about the Bolshevik government. Dukes was also the first to use a trick that became standard: hiding evidence in a waterproof bag in a toilet cistern.
He explained: "I saw how thoroughly Bolshevik agents search houses, study paintings, carpets, remove bookshelves, but it never occurred to anyone … to stick their hand into the cistern of the water closet."
Many of Cumming's officers were happy to be pampered while on duty.
Norman Duhurst, who worked in Thessaloniki, Greece during the war, recalled that Madame Fanny's local brothel was a favorite meeting place.
“It was a choice place with beautiful girls. Every time I managed to combine work with pleasure, because during my visits I always received some useful information."
Sometimes, however, the agents "burrowed". One Russian agent joined the League of Assassins in Sweden, which used the femme fatale to lure the Bolsheviks to a picturesque lakefront villa known for its orgies. There they were tortured and then brutally killed. When the agent was caught, Britain washed its hands and abandoned him.
Moreover, the leadership of the Secret Service (SIS) warned the agents in preparation: “Never trust women … never give your photos to anyone, especially women. Give yourself the impression that you are a donkey with no brains. Never get drunk … If you have to drink a lot … you should drink two tablespoons of olive oil in advance, then you will not get drunk, but you can pretend to be drunk."
Cumming constantly had to struggle to secure funds for his service. Time and again, his employees had to pay agents and pay out of pocket expenses while waiting for the bills to be reviewed by the treasurer of Cumming, who was known simply as Pay.) and the funds will be refunded.
"Pei" rarely left his office and, according to Leslie Nicholson, the head of the Prague bureau, "I had the most perverse idea of the way of life that we led."
This impression was hardly dissipated when, during one of Pei's rare visits abroad, Nicholson received him at a Prague nightclub, where they were entertained by pretty Hungarian twins who were simultaneously performing sexy stripteases.
Pei's monocle fell regularly when his eyebrows were raised in approval or surprise.
Another important figure in Cumming's organization was physicist Thomas Merton, the first "Q" of the Secret Service, who shared Cumming's love of innovation.
One of his early triumphs was the creation of invisible ink for writing secret reports.
Previously, agents used sperm for this purpose. It was an effective remedy, but not everyone liked using it.
Kew also developed methods for concealing documents in key cavities, with double bottom cans, in basket handles. The reports were written on special silk paper, which was then sewn into the courier's clothes, hidden in the cavities of the teeth, in boxes of chocolates.
Epees in walking sticks, pioneered by Cumming, have also proven useful. One of the officers, George Hill, was attacked by two German agents in the Russian city of Mogilev during the war.
“I turned around and waved my cane. As I expected, one of my attackers grabbed her … I deftly retreated, with a jerk exposed the rapier blade and slashed the gentleman with a sideways blow. He screamed and collapsed onto the sidewalk. His comrade, who considered me unarmed, rushed to run."
In the fall of 1916, Cumming had over 1,000 officers and several thousand agents working for them were scattered throughout the world.
Although he wanted to be involved in operations himself again (he called intelligence "a great sport"), he became too important to take risks. However, his invisible presence pervaded the entire service.
“The letter K justified everything,” noted one of the officers, the writer Compton Mackenzie. "We didn't know who K was, where he was, what he was and what he was doing."
By the end of the war, despite some setbacks, Cumming's young service had made notable strides.
Two officers infiltrated the ranks of the anarchists and thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate Allied leaders, including the British Secretary of War Lord Kitchener, the Foreign Minister, the King of Italy and the President of France.
One of Cumming's agents in America exposed a network of German spies who used Irish dock workers to plant explosive devices in the holds of ships transporting vital equipment to England.
It was dangerous work: the body of the partner of the agent who was watching the loading was found at the docks in New York, riddled with bullets.
Cumming died in 1923, only a few months before his retirement. His spirit lives not only in the use of the brand name - green ink, but also in the habit of calling the head of the service he created "K". This tradition continues today. The principles with which he filled the service he created are also preserved.
The work of the service, as before, is carried out in the strictest confidence, the exploits are not sung or recorded.
A fitting tribute to a man for whom no sacrifice was too great and no pain was unbearable in the name of the good he served.
