
"Tirana Academy"!
For several months now, I have been working on translating into Albanian the memoirs of Markus Wolf, the famous former head of STAS counterintelligence. Wolf is considered by many Western intelligence services to be one of the greatest espionage professionals during the Cold War.
Wolff is known, among other things, for establishing a kind of "Academy" for his spies. There, in addition to the classic techniques of espionage, a much more subtle art was also taught, the art of seduction.
The targets were unmarried, “leftover” women who worked in important and sensitive institutions where classified information could be obtained. After training, the new agents were sent covertly to West Germany, where they sought out carefully selected targets, single women, usually middle-aged, isolated by the nature of their work and with a not particularly active social life.
Wolf transformed this technique into a sophisticated intelligence instrument. Through it, a vast network of informants and agents was built in West German institutions, NATO structures, and even in the West German secret service itself.
Up to this chapter, my translation of the book "The Faceless Man, Memoirs of an Explorer" had reached
But, after the events of the last few days, I decided to abandon the project halfway.
"Who needs Markus Wolf's academy anymore?" I said to myself.
And, really, why bother with the Cold War, with STAS, with agents, with seduction techniques, with NATO infiltration and with the history of the Stasi secret services, when in Tirana we seem to have enough material for a whole new chapter of a novel titled "The Academy of Tirana"?
And, if this espionage story continues like this, I believe it won't be long before it enters the annals of the history of European secret services as a matter of interest to study.
I only regret the time wasted translating Wolf. An extraordinary book, an extraordinary espionage story, that will surely remain untouched on my library shelf.
Not because it's not worth reading.
But because, after all this history with espionage based in Tirana, it seems that our reality has decided to pass on to Markus Wolf and his famous Academy.