Excerpt from An Indian Spy, Mihir’s book about the most extraordinary spy of World War II

Bhagat Ram Talwar, a Hindu Pathan, spied for as many as five countries: Britain, Italy, Germany, Japan and the USSR.

On the afternoon of 22 February 1941, a small, clean-shaven, nondescript man, whom one British official described as “unattractive of appearance”, walked down an alleyway in Kabul and knocked on the back door of the Italian Embassy. Afghanistan was a neutral country, the war far away from its borders and, despite having started 17 months earlier, it was not quite a world war yet. The Nazis were supreme in Europe, with only Britain holding out.