Bayard and Holmes - Key Figures in Espionage: The Good, the Bad, & the Booty

About the Authors

Piper Bayard is an author and a recovering attorney. She is also a belly dancer, a mom, and a former hospice volunteer. She currently pens spy thrillers with Jay Holmes, as well as her own post-apocalyptic science fiction.

Jay Holmes is a forty-five year veteran of field intelligence operations spanning from the Cold War fight against the Soviets, the East Germans, and the terrorist organizations they sponsored to the present Global War on Terror. Piper is the public face of their partnership.

Together, Bayard & Holmes author nonfiction articles and books on espionage and foreign affairs, as well as fictional spy thrillers. They are the bestselling authors of The Spy Bride from the Risky Brides Bestsellers Collection and Spycraft: Essentials.

When they arent writing or, in Jays case, busy with other work, Piper and Jay are enjoying their families, hiking, exploring, talking foreign affairs, laughing at their own rude jokes, and questing for the perfect chocolate cake recipe. If you think you have that recipe, please share it with them at their email below.

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All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors, with the exception of reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a book review.

In our first Spycraft Series book, Spycraft: Essentials, we explored the jurisdictions and duties of the main civilian intelligence organizations, terminology, recruitment, basic tradecraft, espionage myths, firearms, and the personalities and personal challenges of those brave souls who populate the US Intelligence Community (IC). That book is more of a whats happening and a how-to, including tips for authors to help them get some of the fiction out of their fiction. In this book, we shift focus to take a closer look at some of the figures in espionage who have quietly influenced the course of historysome for good, some for bad, and some by using the gifts their mamas gave them.

We have only one overarching writing tip: Study the very real people you will find in these pages, because nothing in fiction can compare to the courage of these heroes, or to the depravity of the villains they must overcome.

We all like to think of history as being set in stonesomething solid that we can stand on to guide us when the storm clouds gather, and something to remind us that no matter how bad things get, someone has faced it before, and someone has survived it before. However, when we dig past the clickbait and agendas of the past, we find that what seem to be solid facts are actually fragments of truth laced together in a spider web of inaccurate guesses, honest misunderstandings, deliberate misrepresentations, and the outright lies of the winners. Nevertheless, we are stuck with the paradox that if we dont make sense of history, we can never make sense of the now.

We are all caught in a perpetual loop of the movie Groundhog Day. On a global scale, each generation is born with the same challenges, desires, shortcomings, and hubris, and nothing is happening on the planet that hasnt been happening since the caveman days of Ogg and Uga. Each generation learns the same lessons and wrings its hands in frustration as the next generation ignores its warnings. Therefore, when we study the triumphs and betrayals of the past, we are seeking out the clues past generations have left for us in the hope of understanding the present.

Countries, governments, and technologies can change rapidly. But people? People, as a collective, change at a glacial pace if at all. Sure, views and habits come in and out of fashion, but basic motivations of humanity remain the same. Therefore, one of the best ways to gain insight into people and societies of today is to study history and the individuals who created it. By doing so, we find that many heroes are simply common people called to greatness by their circumstances. We find that some who are now called heroes were really only pawns. And we find that still others who could have been heroes chose instead to be instruments of treachery. Through the character, motives, courage, egos, and decadence of individuals throughout history, we are informed on the heights and depths of human nature, which is at the heart of every government and every endeavor. Studying the individuals of the past gives us insight into what moves the geopolitical tides in our world today, as well as where that flow is taking us tomorrow.

While this is true in every field, Key Figures in Espionage focuses on individuals in the arena of the Shadow Worldthat underground current of humanity that pulses between countries and epochs, quietly carrying out the background work of nations. We focus on a few good guys, a few bad guys, and a few booty spies to illuminate the courage and depravity that humans possess, some devoting their lives to service, and some killing with impunity to gratify their own egos.

Honeypots and booty spies are pretty clear, but what constitutes the good and the bad depends on where a person sits. So where do we sit?

We are unapologetically American in our value judgments on these matters. Piper is an author and a recovering attorney who has worked daily with Holmes for the past decade, learning about foreign affairs, espionage history, and field techniques for the purpose of writing both fiction and nonfiction. Holmes is a forty-five-year veteran of field espionage operations. Since Holmes is still covert, Piper is the public face of their partnership.

The style of this book is narrative nonfiction. We researched the biographies contained in this book through open sources and only included information that is verifiable in the public forum. Also, as noted above, much of history is shrouded in inaccuracies. Therefore, we have noted discrepancies and verified the information included through more than one open source that we consider to be reliable.