Fredrick Forsyth is a heckuva novelist, and his books are usually well researched. He did make one mistake in his most recent novel however.

He describes Markus Wolfs’ (the head of the East German foreign intelligence service, so effective that his organization was never compromised, we never even got a picture of him) honeytrap operations wrong. Forsyth describes the targeting of Lonely Middle Aged secretaries at defense companies and civil service bureaus by young handsome seducers working for the East Germans.

This is incorrect; Markus was truly brilliant. These lonely Middle Aged spinsters (they had to be of that age to rise to a level where they had access to valuable information), were targeted by little middle aged men! Markus’ idea was that using young attractive men would either make the secretaries suspicious, or, even if they deluded themselves, it would still be suspicious to even the casual observer; why would a man with options for young beautiful women, choose a middle aged spinster?

While you can go nuts with anything, an accurate self appraisal will reveal a reasonable expectation of what you can expect. If you are a four, attracting a seven is unlikely; a seven is going to be pursued by male sevens. The trick is to raise your Sex Rank, at least, I think, when your goal is a long term relationship with a view towards marriage.

Markus Wolfs’ strategy was brilliant and, ironically, even led to some lasting happy marriages! How crazy is that? These men approached women of equal sex rank (even though their ulterior motives were way more unusual than most) pretended to be attracted and in love and then found themselves attracted and in love. Many of these women jumped the wall to live in East Germany with these men. And Markus’ appraisement was that they seemed content. An unlikely Cupid indeed.