Ashenden or the British Agent

By W. Somerset Maugham

A fictionalized account of Maugham's experience in the British Intelligence Department during World War One. Ashenden, a writer by profession, is recruited as an agent. He is sent overseas. This is no guns blazing, explosions bursting, high-speed chase type of agent. Ashenden is sort of a middle management agent, getting reports from spies in the field, arranging for the spies to be paid and sending the info on to his bosses higher up. Most of the spies he deals with are like himself, ordinary people recruited because of their access to information and their willingness, in some cases, to betray their native land. Of course, if any of them, including Ashenden, are found out, it will mean death. Indeed, two of the stories are about people being tracked down with the ultimate goal their execution, although one of these people is not a spy but a terrorist.
So Ashenden doesn't pack a gun and doesn't know how to disarm a bomb and relies on public transportation to get around. But nevertheless, he is a heartless, cold and ruthless character and I can only hope that that part is fiction, otherwise I would have to conclude that Maugham was a son of a bitch. For instance, Ashenden uses a woman's self-interest against her, making her chose between her own imprisonment for ten years and her lover, the terrorist's, life. She begs and pleads and weeps and he just looks at her and forces her over and over to write deceiving letters luring her lover to his entrapment and death. In another story, dealing with a British citizen who is spying for the enemy, Ashenden tricks the traitor into going back to Britain and into the waiting hands of the authorities, knowing he will never return, leaving behind his wife who loves him desperately and who Ashenden knows will be emotionally destroyed by the loss of her husband. I guess his boss knew he was picking the right man for the job when he recruited Ashenden.

This was a pretty interesting look at what being a spy was really like during WWI. It wasn't glamorous and it wasn't dashing about being all suave and sophisticated.
As Maugham points out, "The work of an agent in the Intelligence Department is on the whole extremely monotonous. A lot of it is uncommonly useless." Mostly it required sitting about in hotels and waiting for the info to arrive and then sending it on to HQ. Most of the spying was actually done by locals who were willing to gather data mainly for the money they were paid. Ashenden worked out of neutral countries which allowed him to freedom to move around, under his guise of being a writer. It was risky but it certainly wasn't as risky as being on the frontlines getting shot at. A nice dose of reality in a world were James Bond, Jason Bourne and the Tom Cruise character of Mission Impossible are presented as the typical kind of spy.