John le Carré’s loving husband Bank of England who uncovered communist spy chain in New York

As a young economist on the way to a high position at Bank of EnglandDavid Beers would relax while reading John le Carré’s novels.

But the rising finance star plunged into a true spying story when the then 27-year-old was targeted by the Czech secret police as a potential spy while working in New York.

The remarkable story of how a special adviser to former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney acted as a “double agent” to expose communist spies during the Cold War can be revealed today.

Documents discovered by The Mail on Sunday in the Prague archives reveal that the now 68-year-old Mr Beers became a respected quarry for Czech secret service agents when he worked for the Bankers Trust in New York in the 1980s.

Documents hidden for nearly 40 years detail how the spy agency of the communist state of StB believed it had hired him as a source and met with him in four years 25.

“The enemy’s counterintelligence service did not detect any signs of contact and no signs of possible cessation of cooperation,” one StB agent said in a report after meeting with Mr Beers.

But Czech secret agents posing as diplomats at the UN in New York City were unaware that Mr. Beers, inspired only by Carré, was persecuting them and helping to reveal their status as foreign spies.

When he alerted the FBI in early 1983, he had further meetings to acquaint himself with the U.S. agency.

Last night, a double British-American citizen who spent seven years at the Bank of England before retiring last year said: “I was anticipating all along [that they were working as spies]. They all pretended to be economists, but it was obvious they weren’t.

“I was glad to read John only Carré as a teenager because in this shady fraternity of spies [in his books] they were people similar to the ones I was dealing with. I thought it was in my best interest to contact the FBI because I certainly didn’t want to be seen as a suspect. ‘

At a meeting in August 1983, Mr. Beers’ leader, Captain Jaromir Rada, took him to the Smith & Wollensky Steak Restaurant, where he was asked about his personal life in a “non-violent way.”

Chekhov’s October 1983 assessment described Mr Beers, codenamed “boar”, as “intelligence property”. [that] was developed through direct contact with Czechoslovak intelligence staff … the results obtained during the development show that Boar is interested in cooperating ‘.

The profile of Mr. Beers, compiled by Lieutenant Pavel Zavrel, reads: ‘Faith lives a youthful life, which undoubtedly affects his life. He is thought to have certain stomach problems. Still, he loves spicy Japanese and Chinese food and he loves it. He drinks alcohol in moderation, usually beer. ‘

‘Boar’ was categorized as ‘duverny styk’, the second highest rank of contact after a full agent, and provided spies with what they considered to be useful economic intelligence.

In February 1984, they claimed that Mr. Beers had handed over to the Bankers Trust an “internal study” of U.S. bank transactions, which he told them were “partially confidential” – a claim he denies.

“I have never given them any confidential documents from the Bankers Trust or any other source,” he said. “I think they claimed this to impress their bosses in Prague.”

After meeting with Czech agents, usually in Chinese or Japanese restaurants, he called his FBI guides, who would then visit him at his eighth-floor apartment in New York for an interview.

Two agents led by a 30-year-old woman who gave her the name ‘Susan Springle’ would ask him.

Surprisingly, although the Czechs kept Beers ’apartment under control, their agents did not know they had been misled. During this period, there was a wave of expulsions of spies posing as Warsaw Pact diplomats in the United States, and Karel Koecher, a Czech agent in New York, was even revealed to have infiltrated the CIA in 1984.

“My feeling is that the Czechs saw in me a contact with a‘ stripping cell ’, a person who would be potentially useful to them, but they have not yet figured out whether, when or how to install it,” Mr Beers said.

‘Most meetings [with the FBI] happened in my apartment. At least two were present. Mrs. Springle was always there, leading the conversation. They confirmed my opinion from an early age that the agents I was dealing with were spies. ‘

He added: “Until 1985, the FBI proposed this idea to prepare a so-called confidential document that could be given to Miroslav. [one of the StB agents] and that would be a stab operation. He would be arrested and deported.

‘They asked me if I had any feelings for these people. I said, ‘No, I won’t shed tears if you drive them out of the country.’ ‘

Mr Beers, former head of international public finance assessment at S&P Global, now lives in Sussex. His career as a double agent came to an end when a new job opportunity arose.

I turned to the FBI and they agreed. That’s when I moved to Brooklyn and never spoke to the FBI and the Czechs again. ‘

Documents discovered by the MoS show that Czech agents tried to contact Mr Beers for another year and that his file was not finally archived until 1987.