back to the Index
"I'm involved in a dangerous game,
Every other day I change my name,
My face is different but my body's the same,
Boo, boo baby, I'm a spy!"
"Of course you've heard of Mata Hari,
We did business, cash and carry,
Poppa caught us and we had to marry,
Boo, boo baby I'm a spy!"
"Now as a lad I'm not so bad,
In fact, I'm a damn good lover,
But look my sweet, let's be discreet,
And operate under cover."
"I'm so cocky I could swagger,
The things I know would make you stagger,
I'm ten percent cloak and ninety percent dagger,
Boo, boo, baby, I'm a spy!"
A 1960s Brazilian band plays a version of this in a nightclub.
This section should be considered to be for illustrative purposes only and may not reflect the specifics of any Earth that the characters find themselves in.
Soviet Union
GRU
The GRU ("Chief Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff") sends agents to collect strategic intelligence abroad, especially industrial, scientific and technical information. "Special Directorate 8" deals with matters of the occult (although the OGPU manages the secret archives). Yan Berzin is head of the GRU, and is known as a dedicated Communist, energetic leader, skilled spymaster, and a ruthless opponent. He has been known to leave the Soviet Union to personally execute members of the GRU suspected of treachery or incompetence. GRU staff look down on OGPU members as "police spies".
OGPU
The OGPU ("Unified State Political Administration") is still known informally as the Cheka, and is responsible for counter-intelligence and the detection of counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs. The "Foreign Department" (INO) of the OGPU arranges for the discrediting and removal of threats to the revolution who happen to be living abroad (most famously by organizing "The Trust", which appeared to be a monarchist, anti-Bolshevik group). The gulag system, whose head is Genrikh Yagoda, is also administered by the OGPU; around two million persons are imprisoned or exiled within these terrible prisons and labor camps. Head of the OGPU is V. R. Menzhinsky; their headquarters is at 11 Dzerzhinsky Street, Moscow. Ivan the Terrible's secret archive below the Moscow Kremlin is controlled by the OGPU, under Stalin's close supervision.
OBKhSS
The abbreviation stands for "Division for the Fight Against the Embezzlements and Speculations of the Socialist Property". They detect violations of the economic order; in some cases items of as little value as a single grain of wheat are the cause for convictions.
Japan
Black Dragon Society
The Black Dragon Society ( Kokuryukai ) is a secret patriotic group formed in 1901; it grew out of the earlier Black Ocean Society. The existence and size of this group has only recently come to light, despite cabinet ministers, diplomats and high-ranking military officers being members. Much or most of the foreign intelligence received by the Japanese government comes from this group, or from military officers working with this group. The society has developed ties to Sun Yat Sen and to the Nazis -- Communists and the Soviet Russians are apparently considered their main opponent.
The Western press has mentioned the Black Dragon Society as being either a force behind the throne, or a criminal organization resembling a tong; the leader has been called the "Darkside Emperor" in the press. A major training academy for the Black Dragon Society is located in Shanghai. The Black Dragon Society operates many bordellos in Asia, and often uses sex as a tool -- a tool for seduction and subornation, blackmail, pillow talk, and opportunities for assassination. As many as one in ten coolies in some areas may be reporting information to the Black Dragon; and many police officers in Nationalist-controlled areas of China are agents of the Black Dragon. The Black Dragon has established many high-quality brothels in Tijuana, Mexico with the goal of gaining intelligence about American naval and aviation activities in Southern California. They apparently also have a strong presence in the Panama Canal Zone, the territory of Alaska, and in the Pacific Northwest. The Japanese embassies in Berlin, Madrid and Lisbon are the centers of major spy rings in Europe.
Kempai Tai
The Kempai Tai and the Thought Section of the Criminal Affairs Bureau are in charge of domestic counter-intelligence within Japan.
Great Britain
Some of Major Delacy's companions aren't quite sure what branch or outgrowth of the British government he works for. It may or may not be part of the SIS, or perhaps related to the Diogenes Club. It seems to have good relations with the Benedictine monastery at Lindisfarne.
In January of 1936 the Inter-Service Intelligence Committee is formed, to oversee and coordinate between the various security and intelligence agencies; it becomes the Joint Intelligence Committee in July of 1936. The heads of the SIS, Security Service, military intelligence, etc. meet on Wednesday mornings to make up a report for the Cabinet. The chairman of the committee is appointed by the Foreign Office; Sir Ralph Stevenson is the first chairman, serving until June of 1939.
The Security Service
In the world of Pulp Adventure, this entry is almost entirely incorrect.
Also known as MI5: responsible for counter-intelligence work in Britain and throughout the Empire, under the control of the War Office. MI5 feels the main threat to Britain is Communism, which is odd considering the number of secretly-Communist young men it recruits from the University of Cambridge. Fascism is only slowly being recognized as a threat. The Director-General of MI5, Major-General Sir Vernon Kell, is never identified in the press. Within the UK and colonies, the footwork, investigations and arrests are carried out by the Special Branch -- not surprising, since there are only 30 non-clerical persons employed by the Security Service, including 6 men in the surveillance branch. Headquarters: 124-126 Cromwell Road, London, SW7 (although Box 500, London SW1 is the mailing address). The departments are:
-
A Division -- records, administration, facilities
-
B Division -- counter-espionage, counter-subversion
-
C Division -- background checks
-
D Division -- liaison with MI6, the War Office, the Navy, etc.
-
E Division -- monitoring foreign nationals
-
F Division -- colonial matters and political parties
France
Where, if at all, the French Laundry fits into the historical organizations below is unknown to our characters.
The Deuxieme Bureau
Controlled by the Army General Staff, the "2eme Bureau" supplies decryption, reconnaissance, radio interception, and other technical forms of intelligence to the French military. Thousands of DB agents perform spying and counterintelligence work in France and overseas; their oath requires them to keep DB secrets forever. The head of the Army DB is Lt. Colonel Maurice Gauche (a career intelligence officer, and an expert on Germany; age 44 in 1936); most of the DB's officers are conservative and Catholic. The French Navy and Air Force have their own Deuxieme Bureaux, but much smaller and less effective than the Army's.
The actual spies and overseas agents of the DB are mostly organized within the Service de Renseignements (SR; best translation is "intelligence service"); this agency's offices are at 2 bis avenue de Tourville, Paris, and the director is Colonel Rivet. There are some changes to the organizational structure of French military intelligence after 1936.
Bureau de Chiffre
Creates and breaks codes. From 1931 to December 1938, the French have copies of the German day-codes for the Enigma machines, from a spy within the German cipher office. They can thus read encrypted military and diplomatic messages.
La Surveillance du Territoire
Founded in 1934, the ST performs counterintelligence functions for the Sûreté Generale, and in competition with the DB.
Service de Controle et d'Assistance des Indigenes en France des Colonies
The Service de Controle et d'Assistance des Indigenes en France des Colonies, or CAI, monitors Communists and other subversives in France's colonial territories.
Italy
Organizzazione di Vigilanza Repressione dell'Antifascismo
OVRA forms the "secret police" of Fascist Italy, and thus performs most counter-intelligence functions. Not nearly as efficient or nasty as the Germans or Russians, still quite capable of torture and assassination.
Servizio Informazioni Militari
SIM concentrates on "traditional" spying outside of Italy -- hanging out in nightclubs, blackmailing diplomats, bribery, forging documents (and reports to their superiors), anonymous denunciations to the local police, etc. They have neither interest nor ability in technical intelligence areas, but are reasonably good at safe-cracking, burglary, and skulking.
United States
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The FBI monitors anarchists, radicals, and Communists within the United States. In March of 1933, the German ambassador to the United States asked the State Department to investigate threats to the life of Adolf Hitler; the Bureau took this as an opportunity to begin investigating the Bund and other pro-German groups in the United States. Note that until about June of 1934, Bureau agents had no arrest powers, and were not authorized to carry guns (though of course many did).
Military Intelligence
Army Intelligence (G-2) and the Office of Naval Intelligence collect information from diplomatic attaches and the press. Both organizations have some incipient talent at technical intelligence, such as decryption and radio intercepts. Naval attaches, however, have been told that "reputation and career do not profit" by engaging in intelligence work. The Army's G-2 staff number a total of about 70 persons in 1933, and is still declining.
The Room
A private and amateur group organized into a New York City club, the Room; the members are rich and moderately influential, especially after the election of President Roosevelt, who knows a lot of them. They don't have any employees (except maybe a housekeeper and cook) or agents, but have surprisingly strong intelligence backgrounds. Founded about 1927; they meet once a month at 34 East 62nd Street in Manhattan.
Before 1940 President Roosevelt is fond of arranging for private, personal agents to gather foreign intelligence, rather than using the existing tools available through the military or State Department.
Germany
The Abwehr
The Abwehr provides military and naval intelligence for the War Ministry. It operates agent networks, and also gathers technical intelligence (through aerial reconnaissance, for example). Chief of the Abwehr is Rear Admiral Conrad Patzig; their headquarters is at 76/78 Tirpitzufer, Berlin.
The Foreign Office has a very capable decryption office; they have had excellent success in breaking military, diplomatic and commercial codes -- except those used by Poland and the Soviet Union. Note that the German military (and railways, postal service, etc.) have been using various models of the Enigma machines since 1925. They, and most of the world's cryptographers, consider the Enigma system to be unbreakable if properly used. However, the Polish military has been successfully decoding all of the Enigma messages it can obtain since at least 1931.
The Sicherheitsdienst
The SD is a branch of the SS, and searches for spies and subversives within Germany; in addition, they are gathering secret files on the Nazi leadership. Head of the SD is Reinhard Heydrich, a clever, ruthless, and ambitious Nazi; SD (and SS) headquarters are consolidated at Prinz Albrecht Palais, Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin (from early 1934 onwards).
The Gestapo
The Gestapo (founded in April of 1932) is led by Rudolf Diels, from 8 Prinz Albrecht Strasse, Berlin. They work entirely within Germany or German-controlled territory.
The Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte‚ Deutsches Ahnenerbe´ e.V. (Study Society for Primordial Intellectual Science, German Ancestral Heritage), another branch of the SS, was formally established in Berlin in 1932 to promote the science of ancient intellectual history. Its areas of research seem to extend far beyond genealogy.
Evidence exists that its foundation dates back to a meeting in Munich in 1928. In June of that year, the core leadership of the Vril Society met with Hermann Wirth (a Dutch historian obsessed with Atlantean mythology), Richard Walter Darré (now head of the Race and Settlement Head Office, RuSHA); Herman von Klempt (from Heidelberg University); and Heinrich Himmler. Immediately following that meeting, a large portion of the membership of the Vril Society stopped participating in its activities and became members of the National Socialist Party.
China
For the Communists, espionage and security is handled by the Special Work Committee, headed by Kang Sheng. In the case of the Koumintang, every ministry and department is spying and spied on; but officially the Special Works Department of the Clandestine Investigation Section is in charge of espionage and counter-intelligence. Dai Li is in charge; he's also head of the fascist "Blue Shirts" clique within the KMT.
Romania
Serviciul Secret de Informații
An organ of the Direcţiunii Generale a Poliţiei, the SSI is primarily focused on political organizations within Romania. They fill the "secret police" role very well: infiltrating groups, reading mail, interrogations, surveillance of foreigners and of suspicious citizens, censoring the press, spreading rumors, etc.. Field intelligence work is performed by the Corps of Detectives. The head of the Security Police is a delegate to Interpol.
The extreme right (represented by the Iron Guard, the Legionnaire Movement, the Legion of the Archangel Michael, the All-for-the Fatherland Party, etc.) and the extreme left (mostly Communists) are continually being banned, exiled, and imprisoned by the government.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.