I WAS CICERO by Bazna, Elyesa, with Hans Nogly

New York 1962, Harper & Row, US First edition , hard bound in dust jacket, , VG/VG ( dj medium surface scuffing), 6x9, ix, 212 pages, -------------------------------------------------------------- Ankara, autumn, 1943-capital of neutral Turkey, battleground of diplomats maneuvering for concessions, hotbed of Axis and Allied agents. In the kitchen of the First Secretary of the British Embassy, Elyesa Bazna, a Turkish national, hides his Leica in a saucepan above the hearth, finishes a generous serving of baklava, and goes to bed with the susceptible nurse of the First Secretary's infant daughter.Thus Elyesa Bazna, a frustrated concert singer with a flair for photography and expensive tastes, launched Operation Cicero, one of the most sensational espionage coups of modern history. In the course of it, Bazna, having wangled the job of valet to His Majesty's Ambassador, turned over to the Germans for 15,000 pounds per item the top Allied secrets (D-Day and the Stalin-Roosevelt-Churchill agreements among them). In these pages he reports exactly how he operated from day to day, telling for the first time the complete story of the exploits we have hitherto known only from the point of view of Bazna's Nazi contact, Moyzisch, to whom Cicero himself remained an impenetrable mystery.--------------------------------------------------------------------If Elyesa Bazna-the man who was Cicero-had never existed, it would have been necessary for Graham Greene to invent him: with his do-it-yourself spy kit and his dreams of grandeur. The fact of his existence is history, however, and we have his own word, in this extraordinary book, for the details of his character and modus operandi. Whatever his motive, he has not hesitated to tell all, and his total recall-singing lieder in the Embassy drawing room while the Ambassador accompanies him on the piano, seducing a young girl entrusted to his protection, jumping from a fleeing car with an OSS man in pursuit-produces here what the New Statesman calls "not only the late war's most successful spy story but crammed with superb comedy.