The Art of the Honey Trap, Part 2

 

 “They were sharp operators who realized that a lot can be done with sex.” — Markus Wolfe

---

Hello from rainy Texas.

If you read part one of the art of the honey trap, go ahead and skip the introduction and head straight for the line break.

If not…

One of the questions, I’m asked most often in regard to being a writer is: where do you come up with this stuff?

Ideas are easy. I’ve never had a shortage of questions. Questions like: what leads good people to do bad things? What motivates people to blindly follow others? How well can we ever really know a person? Where does one draw the line between self-interest and doing the right thing? With Speak of the Devil specifically, it was: Why can a woman (or a man, for that matter) sell certain things—but not their own body? Where do we as a society draw the line between what is legal and what isn’t? And how far is too far when it comes to getting what you want?

All of these questions led me to this story, to these characters. I wanted to put people in a precarious position and watch how they worked themselves out of it. So, I did.

Speaking of which…in a previous post, I promised to regale you with some real-life stories of honey traps. With this book, as always, I did a fair amount of research and quite a lot of reading into real-life people in order to gain insight into my characters and the type of personality traits and motivations that might lead them to make the choices they make.

---

Most people tend to think of the honey trap in terms of women seducing men, but obviously, it works both ways…

The broadest honey trap in intelligence history was probably the creation of the notorious East German spymaster, Markus Wolf. In the early 1950s, Wolf recognized that, with marriageable German men killed in large numbers during World War II and more and more German women turning to careers, the higher echelons of German government, commerce, and industry were now stocked with lonely single women, ripe — in his mind — for the temptations of a honey trap. In turn, Wolf set up a special department of the Stasi, East Germany’s security service, and staffed it with his most handsome, intelligent officers. He called them “Romeo spies.” Their assignment was to infiltrate West Germany, seek out powerful, unmarried women, romance them, and squeeze from them all their secrets.

Thanks to the Romeo spies and their honey traps, the Stasi successfully penetrated most levels of the West German government and industry. 

One of the most interesting cases for me was that of Frank Dietzel:

He was blond, blue-eyed, and a physicist. Gabriele Kliem had dated a man just like him once. She’d loved that man. Getting a second shot at that love was almost too good to be true. And of course, it was. Frank Dietzel already knew everything about Gabriele weeks before he approached her outside a quiet Bonn hospital while she waited for a sick friend. He hated Russia. She hated Russia. She wanted world peace. He wanted world peace. It was a match made in heaven. He’d been chosen for Gabriele specifically because of his looks—the perfect shadow of a past love.

In reality, Frank Dietzel was a Stasi agent, an elite master of seduction employed by East Germany. A “Romeo,” as they were called. Dietzel had been assigned to Gabriele Kliem because she worked at the American embassy. But unlike most honey trap operations of the Cold War, which typically lasted a night before incriminating photos were presented, the Romeos played for keeps. By cultivating their relationships with the women in East Germany over the course of years, they were supplied with a steady flow of information.

Frank Dietzel and Gabriele Kliem got engaged three months after they met, and although they never married (Dietzel already had a wife back across the Berlin Wall), they remained engaged for seven years. Duped by Dietzel’s cover story that he worked for a research company that sought to bring peace to the region, Gabriele kept him supplied with photographs that she had taken of documents in the Office of Defense Cooperation at the American embassy. And all the while, he told her that he loved her.

In spite of an advertising campaign by the federal government warning women of Stasi tactics, she has said that she never asked her lover who else was looking at the material she collected. Instead, she lived instead for the days they spent together, when they shopped endlessly for the life she believed they would one day share.

But by 1984, Gabriele had finally had enough of her seven-year engagement. She was nearing the end of her 30’s and as of late, she’d only seen Frank a day or two out of every month. She had no way of knowing it, but he had been working multiple assignments the whole time. Plus, he had a family at home and, well, things could get busy for a Stasi agent. Gabriele broke it off, but it wasn’t until 1991 that she discovered who Frank Dietzel really was—when she was arrested for espionage.

The realization was an enormous blow to Gabriele, but perhaps the worst part was that her loving fiance, whom she’d spent most of a decade planning a life with, had been awarded a medal for the job he did with her. In addition, it was only at her trial for espionage in 1996, that Kliem discovered not only had her fiance had handed over all of her love letters to psychologists to be picked apart, he had also given most of the consumer goods they had spent so many tender afternoons shopping for, to his wife back in East Germany.

---

P.S. Your notes and messages and your reviews in relation to Speak of the Devil have blown me away—oh your reviews. Just look at them. 🙂

★★★★★  “King’s writing is captivating. She pulls you into her stories and makes you wonder what will happen next. The characters King creates are so real and vivid. They could be anyone. The feelings and chemistry she develops make the characters 3-dimensional. I can’t wait to see what we get next for King! She’s definitely on her way up!!

★★★★★ “Wow is all I have to say once again! This series (all standalone, spinoffs of each other) has completely blown my mind, all in good ways. Britney weaves such tangled webs that you never know what is going to happen next.” 

★★★★  “After finishing the story, these characters will definitely resonate with me for a while. Speak of the Devil is a romantic thriller, oozing of sex and sensuality—exploring the most exhibitionist behavior while tapping into the human mind’s most primitive emotions. You’ll devour the story quickly, while also noticing how this book relates to sex and interpersonal relations in a much more profound way than it’s predecessors.” 

★★★★★  “With that, this is a series that stands apart from all other psychological thrillers out there as Britney King uses unique concepts and slays character roles. If you are a fan of twisty reads and books with spectacular endings that make you gasp and cheer, then this is the book (along with the others that I will mention again) that you should be reading. I highly recommend them.”

★★★★★  “Speak of the Devil is a fantastical story that left me gripping the edge of my seat just waiting to see where the next shoe would drop.  With the fear of the heroine always getting caught, I literally cringed at the risky situations that she was put in during each chapter. Britney King wrote a marvelous 5-star read with Speak of the Devil.”

★★★★★  “By far my favorite of the New Hope series. I couldn’t put it down!! Like the others, I believe this could be read as a stand alone, however, you would be missing so much of the story. I loved the familiar names, catching up a little where the other characters left off, plus a new cast of characters as well. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good psychological read (but do start at Social Affair, you won’t regret it!”

:

---

Want to make sure you never miss a post? Sign up to have them delivered straight to your inbox.

---