The Dangerous Otto Katz

Imagine a character who encompasses the quintessential spy: charming, ruthless, and able to blend into any culture. Set the scene in the first half of the 20th century. Conclude with the character being hanged for betraying the cause to which he gave his soul. This isn't the plot of a novel or movie, but the story of real-life spy Otto Katz. A Czech bourgeois, Katz became a strict adherent of Soviet-style communism. His many incarnations included life as a well-known journalist, a rabid antifascist, a Hollywood fund-raiser hobnobbing with Marlene Dietrich and Lillian Hellman, a manipulator of opinion during the Spanish civil war, a fomenter of communism in Latin America, and an inspiration for characters in the 1940s films Watch on the Rhine and Casablanca. Cultural scholar Miles (The Wreck of the Medusa) excels at illustrating Katz's influence at many junctures of history while trying to unravel the enigma. Yet the mark of a good spy is that you can never really know the true man.