Louis R. Mist was born to a Russian revolutionist exiled in 1905 and a sex worker, on 17 October 1914. He had a twin brother Millan, and his mother could not raise them as a prostitute - she brought them to St Michael’s Home for Christian Children on the second day of their births. The twins were raised together until a Mancunian couple adopted Millan a year after.

On the other hand, Louis stayed in St Michael’s until 1924. He had demonstrated incredible skills in Literature and French, and had learned German by himself using library textbooks during his stay - nothing too impressive, just photographic memory and boredom. This eventually led to his adoption by a local council member. He attended a public primary school in Liverpool for a year and was recommended to attend Riverdale College for Christian Boys in London.

Riverdale College was one of London's best private boarding schools for boys. Louis did not quite enjoy his stay for the first few years, because of his strong Scouse accent and the need to catch a train to go home every holiday. He was extremely quiet because he could not be bothered to explain what he was trying to say to his schoolmates, but even after his accent faded over time, he was still quiet. He skipped Mathematics and Natural Sciences to read by the swing, and soon enough he learned to read and write Russian.

In 1930, a boy two years his junior, Sherman Rogers, joined his afterschool reading session by the swing. The two quickly got along and became good friends, and Sherman would often invite Louis to spend the school holidays with his family in London.

Louis continued to excel in academics. He won multiple European journalism competitions and was granted a full scholarship from the University of Cambridge in 1932 to study English, despite having miserable Mathematics and Natural Sciences grades. On his graduation day, Sherman gave him a silver brooch shaped like a treble clef.

Louis started his tertiary studies at Clare College, University of Cambridge, in September 1932. He had exchanged letters with Sherman in his first year but gradually drifted apart. He enjoyed the solitary and unbothered life at university, but none of his acquaintances became real friends during this period. He travelled to Denmark for an exchange programme in 1933 for a trimester and often spent holidays overseas.

One afternoon, a retired officer of the MI6 came to the College to reminisce and look for potential future agents from an educated background. He came across the music room, where Louis played Waltz in E minor, and listened to the four-minute piece. He discussed current political affairs concerning Germany with Louis, and offered the young man to train as a field agent in the MI6. Having nothing else better to do, he accepted the offer and left the school, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts.

Louis’ first actual fieldwork was in 1935, when he was dispatched to Munich to investigate airfields with a senior, Elina Rosenheim (pseudonym). Having served in the MI6 for ten years and still possessing the charms of an unmarried woman, Rosenheim was both Louis’ superior and confidante.

Louis stayed in Munich as a Belgian engineer and successfully gathered some information regarding factory production in Bavaria. It may seem that he indulged himself in the life of a carefree bachelor, making acquaintances in bars and clubs. Still, surprisingly he was personally involved in none of these relationships. He acquainted himself with the bartender of Florian, a common social place for the upper class. The bartender, although young, was a careful person.

In December 1937, an informant from the factory Louis worked at was captured by the Gestapo, and revealed his engagement with foreign intelligence services. On the night of a supposed rendezvous, Louis was ambushed by three Gestapo officers and barely made his way out. He crashed his automobile into an old bookstore by the street and hid in the store for what seemed like an eternity, the smoke and broken bookshelves nearly buried him. He lost his right eye and had lung problems after this incident.

Rosenheim allegedly “found ways” to save his life and get him back to London, her involvement in this incident still remain unclear.

Louis spent Christmas in London and recovered. His role in Munich had to be abandoned, but Rosenheim insisted on keeping him an active field agent because of his exceptional ability to infer hidden information.

54 Broadway assigned Louis a new role, and to guarantee the secrecy, they required Louis to abandon his old identity so that he would not have a choice of whether to adopt a facade or not - the facade is the real him. Louis agreed, and was given the identity of a Danish journalist, christened Lucas Christiansen, and codenamed E minor - suggested by the Cambridge don that recruited him in 1934.

To familiarise himself more with Danish culture, especially journalism, he spent 1938 writing for Berlingske in Copenhagen as Lucas Christiansen. His role as a foreign reporter in Germany was also earned “rightfully” in late 1938 when a group of Berlingske journalists was sent to Berlin, Munich and Nuremberg.

E Minor was among those sent to Nuremberg, a major city of Nazi Germany. However, MI6 did not value human intelligence resources then, and the whole intelligence system was also primitive. He was disillusioned with Britain’s passive attitude towards human intelligence, and also the meagre budget could not keep up with the work he had to put in to gather information. He put his dissatisfaction into some reports he sent back, but there were no signs of change from Broadway.

He turned to the Soviet Embassy in Berlin. He was associated with the GRU, providing his handler Svetlana Dunayevskaya with intelligence regarding Germany and Germany only - information that was ignored on the British side. His NKVD codename was “Torrent”. Until 1944, he worked for both sides, with the ultimate goal of destroying Fascism. He had a romantic relationship with Dunayevskaya for a year, ending as she noticed the silver brooch he always wore and wanted to take it.

On the British side, E Minor had built a strong informant network centred in Nuremberg and extended to Munich. In 1942, he requested a personal wireless operator, whom he despised and sacked a year later. His second wireless operator happened to be Sherman Rogers from Riverdale College. He pretended not to know him because he could not reveal his old identity as Louis, even when Sherman accidentally called him by his real name - which he always replied by correcting him. He stopped wearing the silver brooch to keep his lie secure.

He developed feelings for Sherman as they worked together and desperately wanted to let him know he missed him all these years. However, his cold demeanour in front of colleagues did not crack at all, no matter how hard Sherman tried on his side. Eventually, the two began a purely physical relationship despite having romantic feelings. This continued throughout 1943 and 1944, with Sherman constantly trying to connect with E Minor personally, and E Minor backing away to keep the professionalism.

In 1944, an RSHA/SS informant warned him about suspicion from Siegfried Herbst, Florian’s owner who had recently joined the RSHA. E Minor silenced Herbst by offering an escape route and settlement in Switzerland or Iceland of his choice. Even though Herbst took the offer, he undermined E Minor’s reputation by providing false information or those out of real-time.

Sherman received a warning before the Bombing of Nuremberg on 2 January 1945, signalling his need to retreat and the end of his service for MI6. E Minor did not receive this warning, meaning that Broadway still needed him at the last stage of the war, but Sherman informed him of this catastrophic event. Sherman wanted to retreat with him, to which he agreed and arranged transportation to France, but secretly he only arranged this for Sherman. On the morning of 31 December 1944, he left the silver brooch on the gramophone by Sherman’s bedside table. Sherman took the brooch, did not ask about it and stepped into the car waiting for them. To his surprise, E Minor stayed behind and the chauffeur drove away on the road to the border.

E Minor left for Berlin the day after, to reunite with his Berlingske journalist friends and following his informants' migration. As the war proceeded, many officers were called back to the capital. He lived with two Berlingske journalists in Berlin, functioning mainly on caffeine with at most 4 hours of sleep, often disturbed. He provided the Allies with strategic insights in the last critical stage of the war.

He celebrated with his fellow journalists as Berlin fell, which marked the end of World War II’s European Theatre. Overall, he was an essential source on the Soviet side, and more so on the British side. The Allies arranged his return from war-torn Germany to England.

E Minor returned not really a hero, because he worked for the secret service instead of fighting on battlefields.

The first thing he did after arriving in London was to buy a train ticket to Liverpool, where it all started thirty years ago. He arrived at the Waterloo station ten minutes early on 9 May 1945, not knowing that Sherman was waiting for him on the platform, with his silver brooch. They did not talk, nor did they see each other again in their lifetime.

Without the ultimate purpose of destroying fascism and being left-leaning himself, E Minor had no intention of participating in the Cold War. He grew overly paranoid and mentally insane during his time in East Germany, and took his own life with a pistol in 1955. He played Waltz in E Minor, B. 56, for one last time before his death. Blood splattered across the keyboard and tainted the sheet music, ending the dramatic symphony named E Minor.

The creation of E Minor’s character was sometime in mid-2022. His personality and appearance were decided when I read Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, and the first design was an indifferent tyrant. Over time, his personality became increasingly “smoothed out” which made the tangled story with Sherman possible in the first place.

He is probably the character I put the most effort into. To make his character more realistic in a historical sense, I researched secret services in WWII and took inspiration from real-life Soviet spies, like Rudolf Rössler of the “Lucy Ring” in Switzerland, who allegedly provided information to both the Soviets and an MI6 station. E Minor here was almost like his role reversed. E Minor’s talent and age closely resemble Hugh Trevor-Roper, an exceptional British codebreaker and an Oxford historian. And lastly, E Minor having wireless operators is also a Soviet thing.