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The closest British espionage writer Anthony Horowitz has come to being a spy involved delivering £150,000 in unregistered bonds - no questions asked.

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Anthony Horowitz: brush with espionage

“I had to get on a motorbike and deliver £150,000 in bearer bonds to an office - it’s probably about £2m ($2.5m) now - pretending to be a security courier for [my] own father and not being allowed to ask any questions,” the James Bond novelist told The Spying Game podcast. “That’s the nearest I will ever get to being you”.

The ‘you’ he’s referring to is Shawnee Delaney, a former US Defense Intelligence Agency officer from California who has been mixed up in countless cases from Afghanistan and Iraq to an American corporate espionage case involving China and cyber-spying. Horowitz was in awe of Delaney’s steely nerves as she described being in the middle of life-and-death situations.

Shawnee Delaney is a real-life DIA spy

‍Delaney, a SPYEX consultant who’s been on four war zone tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, described one particularly harrowing ordeal where she was trapped in a car with two colleagues while they were threatened by a man smashing their windows.

“He ran to the back to get an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) and he threw this over his shoulder,” Delaney told The Spying Game’s host, political satirist Rory Bremner. “And, as the two guys I was in the car with were panicking, I was trying to calm them down. I was trying to calm this crazy guy down, and he kept coming up at me and telling me he was going to kill me.”

The drama ended when Delaney called a contact to hurry to the location and help negotiate with their enemy - but that was only one instance in a lifetime of thrilling espionage tales.
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HUMINT & cyber-espionage

Delaney, an expert in both human intelligence and cyber-espionage, has more in common with Horowitz than their joint love of spying and tradecraft, however. They were both destined to excel in their professions.

Horowitz described how he was practicing his author’s book-signing technique when he was only 11 years old and deciding which color spine would be best for his books. A decade later, he was a published novelist. He has completed three James Bond novels along with his Alex Rider series and many others.

Like Horowitz, Delaney decided on her career path at a young age. She was always interested in news and current affairs, so when CBS News anchor Dan Rather announced that the US Marine barracks had been blown up in Beirut in 1983, Shawnee decided to find out more about what motivated terrorists.

Both were drawn in by the world of intelligence, security, and secrets and haven’t let go. To find out more about the real world of spying and the art of espionage writing, listen to Anthony Horowitz and Shawnee Delaney’s podcast, The Spying Game: A Question of Identity, hosted by the legendary British comedian Rory Bremner.

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‍Shawnee Delaney is an expert on cybersecurity, insider threat program development, surveillance, and investigation. She can be booked at SPYEX.com as a speaker, trainer or consultant.