This is True Spies, the podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time.

Week by week, you'll hear the true stories behind the operations that have shaped the world we live in.

You'll meet the people who live life undercover.

What do they know?

What are their skills?

And what would you do in their position?

I'm Rihanna Needs, and this is True Spies from Spyscape Studios. Among the kind of barstool advice dispensed by old people to younger people,

life's all about taking risks, pops up pretty frequently.

And where would this podcast be without risk takers?

Those daring men and women who shape history and live to tell the tale.

But as much as we fantasize about taking that glorious leap into uncertainty,

there's always that nagging flipside. What if it doesn't work out?

Harold Derber knows all about risk.

It was risky to join the merchant navy,

dodging U-boats in the merciless Atlantic.

Risky to scam, dodge and hustle his way to Miami.

Riskyer still to fall in love.

It was damn near suicidal to smuggle Cuban refugees into the U.S. in open defiance of the State Department.

Looking back, the biggest risk of all was leaving Manchester in the first place.

And now, all those long shots later, that's where he's washed up.

I think he had a very fraught relationship with England, so part of that could have been

the absolute miserable upbringing he must have had in England during the war with rationing

...