(MENAFN- AsiaNet News) Amid the thunder of tanks and the blaze of battlefields in World War II, where legends were forged through fire and fury, there existed a shadow warrior-a phantom in the cloak of espionage. He didn't fight with bullets, but with secrets. His name? Bhagat Ram Talwar. Codename: Silver. His allegiance? All five of the major warring powers-Germany, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Union, and Britain.

While history lionizes the generals and their grand strategies, the war's hidden theatre was pulsing with unsung heroes who risked it all in the clandestine realm of spies. And towering above them all was Talwar, an Indian revolutionary-turned-double agent-turned quintuple agent-whose real-life saga reads like the plot of a high-octane thriller.

Born in 1908 in British India's turbulent North-West Frontier Province, Talwar hailed from a wealthy Punjabi lineage. His father, once an ally of the British Raj, became a staunch anti-colonial voice following the gruesome Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919. The spirit of resistance ran in the family-his brother, Hari Kishan, was executed for attempting to assassinate the British Governor of Punjab. Inspired by revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Talwar gravitated toward the radical Kirti Kisan Party, a leftist outfit rooted in Punjab's communist movement.

It was in 1941, under a veil of subterfuge, that Talwar's espionage odyssey truly began. Tasked with escorting Subhash Chandra Bose out of British territory, he embarked a journey. Bose, disguised as a mute Muslim pilgrim named Mohammed Ziauddin, and Talwar, posing as his secretary, Rahmat Khan, ultimately landed in Berlin to seek support from Hitler himself.

When Bose introduced Talwar to German officials as his emissary, the young Indian found his true calling in the dark arts of espionage. Enthralled by his knack for intelligence gathering, the Nazis trained him, showered him with riches, equipped him with cutting-edge spy gear, and even awarded him the prestigious Iron Cross-their highest military honor.

But behind the curtain of loyalty, Talwar played his most daring hand-betrayal.

A communist at his core, Talwar had no intention of aiding fascists. As soon as Hitler's tanks rolled into the Soviet Union, Talwar approached Russian agents in Kabul and became a triple agent, feeding Nazi intelligence to Moscow. When Britain and the USSR forged their uneasy alliance, Talwar slid seamlessly into British service too, becoming the only spy Moscow trusted enough to share with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE).

His British handler? None other than Peter Fleming, elder brother of James Bond creator Ian Fleming. It was Peter who christened him Silver.

Armed with a transmitter provided by the Germans and nerves of steel, Talwar began relaying fictitious reports from the manicured gardens of the Viceroy's Palace in Delhi to Nazi HQ in Berlin. As the Axis powers expanded their coordination, Talwar duped the Italians and Japanese as well, completing his unparalleled transformation into a five-way spy.

By the time the smoke of war cleared in 1945, Talwar had earned payments from every major power he spied on-and betrayed them all. His ultimate loyalty? India, and the dream of liberation through revolution.

With the war's end, Talwar melted into obscurity, vanishing into the rugged wilds of the North-West Frontier. He re-emerged only after Partition, settling in Uttar Pradesh, where he lived out the rest of his life in silence, passing away in 1983.

For decades, his tale remained buried-until author and journalist Mihir Bose unearthed it in his gripping biography, Silver: The Spy Who Fooled the Nazis.“The most remarkable spy among them was a little-known Indian, code-named Silver,” Bose writes.

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