The Eagle in the Mirror

In Search of War Hero, Master Spy and Alleged Traitor Charles Howard 'Dick' Ellis

Jesse Fink

• Publisher: Black & White Publishing
• Year: 2023
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785305115
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the story of Charles Howard 'Dick' Ellis. The longest-serving spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis helped set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). In the 1940s he was considered one of the top three secret agents in MI6 and controlled its activities, as one journalist put it, 'for half the world'.

But in the 1980s crusading espionage journalist Chapman Pincher (in the hugely successful books Their Trade is Treachery and Too Secret Too Long) and retired MI5 intelligence officer Peter Wright (in the worldwide bestseller Spycatcher) posthumously accused Ellis of having operated as a 'triple agent' for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1965, while under interrogation in London, Ellis had allegedly made a confession that he had supplied information to the Nazis before World War II. However, Pincher's and Wright's accusations against Ellis have never been comprehensively proven. No confession has materialised.

Was Ellis guilty or was an innocent man framed? By confessing did he take the fall for someone else? Or had the intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia been fatally compromised by a 'super mole'? Internationally bestselling author JESSE FINK (Pure Narco, Bon: The Last Highway, The Youngs) attempts to find out the truth once and for all.

The Eagle in the Mirror is not just a long-overdue biography of the unheralded Dick Ellis; it's a gripping real-life international whodunit.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Books by Jesse Fink
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Maps
• Author’s Note Twist Slowly in the Wind
• Chapter 1 The Purge
• Chapter 2 The Toils of Childhood
• Chapter 3 Front to Frontier
• Chapter 4 Stalin and the King’s Messenger
• Chapter 5 A Stranger in a Strange Land
• Chapter 6 The League of Gentlemen
• Chapter 7 The Spy from Santiago
• Chapter 8 The General
• Chapter 9 A Dangerous Game
• Chapter 10 The Venlo Myth
• Chapter 11 The Black Book
• Chapter 12 Our Man in New York
• Chapter 13 A Sledgehammer in Search of an Anvil
• Chapter 14 Little Window
• Chapter 15 Philby’s Blank
• Chapter 16 The Clouds are Parting
• Chapter 17 Crying Towel
• Chapter 18 Nailing Ellis
• Chapter 19 Among the Dripping Shrubs
• Chapter 20 A Break in the Silence
• Epilogue The Ellis Identity
• Acronyms
• Glossary
• Gazetteer
• Key Events
• Dramatis Personae
• Honours Received by Charles Howard ‘Dick’ Ellis
• Written Works by Charles Howard ‘Dick’ Ellis
• Quotes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Endnotes