Afterword The White-Haired Villain
The man who sat there and pulled his thousands of strings, stretching all over the world, had once been famous, but it was believed that he had died more than twenty years earlier in a Japanese prison. He was now in his seventies; his hair white and his face lined with the passions and cruelties that had filled his life.
There is something sinister about white-haired villains. In addition to Richard Sorge, the Milo March series boasts two others, both gangsters, in Jade for a Lady and Green Grow the Graves. They make me think of the notorious crime boss Whitey Bulger, who was captured in 2011 after sixteen years on the lam.
I had never heard of Richard Sorge and discovered quite by accident that he was a real person, and one of the most brilliant spies
