City of Spies

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Let me pass on to you the one thing I've learned about this place. No one here is exactly what he appears. Not Mollari, not Delenn, not Sinclair... And not me."
—G'kar, Babylon 5 -- "Mind War"

It's a city. Of spies.

These locations tend to occur in multi-polar 'verses (that is with two or more power blocs) and are either neutral locations or the capital cities of the powers themselves.

If all the world's spies seem to work in the city a Spy Drama is set in, it's a City of Adventure.

Not to be confused with City of Villains.

Examples of City of Spies include:

Anime and Manga

  • Roanapur, in Black Lagoon, has a fair number of spies running around in addition to all the criminals.
  • Thanks to the mysterious Hell's Gate, Tokyo in Darker than Black is crawling with agents for every faction imaginable, from criminal cartels to national intelligence agencies.

Comic Books

  • One of the Marvelman/Miracleman comics ("Spy Story", #21 of the revived series, 1991, by Neil Gaiman) was about a woman living in a city of spies. Turns out all the members of the intelligence agencies of the world who couldn't adjust to the New World Order were put into one big city to intrigue their little hearts out.
  • LA serves as an interesting variation of this in "Desolation Jones". It's a city full of spies who've all been forceably retired and who are kept legally invisible by the government. They also can't leave.

Film

Literature

  • Boktor (capital of Drasnia) and Mal Zeth (capital of the Mallorean Empire) in The Belgariad. Drasnia tops it all, being a country of spies. Spies are its chief export (that and reindeer).
  • King's Landing in A Song of Ice and Fire, though to a lesser extent than some of the other examples on this page, does have a large number of spies for different factions.
  • Alan Furst in his Night Soldiers series hops from city to city. The favorite seems to be Paris.
  • In the Blackford Oakes Series this happens. Berlin is notably like this in The Story of Henri Tod.
  • Academy City in A Certain Magical Index is the world leader in scientific research and development, being the sole location in which espers (psychics) are made. Naturally, it's filled with spies from every other major faction.

Live Action TV

  • If you were to believe Burn Notice, Miami is full of spies and retired spies.
    • Then again, the city attracts a lot of retiring people and is pretty close to Cuba.
    • And it doesn't hurt that Florida doesn't have a state income tax, which makes it a popular place for mobile people to have as a residence.
    • Or that one of the world's best/most notorious spies just happens to be stranded there and draws a lot of intelligence-related attention to himself.
      • Or that the people who burned him aren't keeping his location a secret any more.
  • Babylon 5: The station itself is a massive nest of intrigue, mostly because its the only neutral port around and between the major powers. Being the hub of diplomats means it attracts the dark side of diplomacy, spying.
  • Vancouver, of all places, on Intelligence.
  • The Village in The Prisoner. All the inhabitants are forcibly retired spies.
  • Berlin in Pan Am. Of course as the series is set in the '60s, during the Cold War, as noted below this is Truth in Television.
  • Covert Affairs often spends time in legendary spy cities like Munich, Istanbul, or Hong Kong but less is made of their sinister reputation then might be and sometimes you get the impression that the whole world is a city of spies.

Real Life

  • Berlin (Cold War)
    • Lampshaded in all conceivable versions of Casino Royale by Bond girl Vesper Lynd.
  • Lisbon (World War Two)
    • Lisbon was the easiest place for the Allies to land spies, and the go to place for any refugee wanting out of Europe. Thus everyone wanted to know what was going on there.
    • The famous con-man-with-a-heart-of-gold Dusan Popov operated here in the famous "double-cross" deception operation. In so doing he not only got decorated by the British(his real employers)but by the Germans.
  • Washington DC (Cold War, present)
    • You can even take tours.
    • The opening video on the National Spy Museum tour estimates that DC has more spies per capita than any other city on the planet.
    • Which causes problems when selecting areas for dead drops or covert meetings between spies and their handlers. Because thousands of spies have been working in cities like Washington and Moscow for over half a century, there's very few 'ideal' locations that haven't been used before. In theory a security service could stake out these places permanently and have a good chance of catching a spy in the act.
  • Moscow (same)
    • Russian intelligence literally turn over stones in their search for spies.
  • Casablanca and Tangiers (World War Two)
  • Istanbul (Practically Forever.)
    • Istanbul has some claim to be the Trope Namer. It is after all a very "Byzantine" city.
      • The atmosphere is captured in the World War II history Istanbul Intrigues by the author Barry Rubin who called it a "real life Casablanca".
      • Depicted as a nearly literal City of Spies in From Russia with Love.
  • Helsinki (Cold War): Because it was close to the Soviet Union, largely sympathetic to the West, but neutral. The Finns were quite aware of their situation, practicing a policy of "bowing to the East in such a way that it could not be seen as mooning the West."
  • Tallinn, Estonia (Today), because it was once part of the Soviet Union, but is now firmly in the Western camp (part of the EU and NATO). Since 2008 the city is home to the NATO Cyber Defense Center. This last is not particularly surprising: Internet penetration in Estonia is ridiculously high (the country was the first to hold official online elections), the country has a large number of internet-based companies, and Estonian systems are a common target for Russian hackers.
  • Kathmandu (For the last decade or so): With Nepal being sandwiched between the two next likely superpowers, and a strategic prize for either, the capital has become like this. Sympathetic towards India mostly, but makes sure to keep Beijing in the loop.
  • Vienna (Cold War). Most people don't realize this, but Austria, like Germany, was carved up into four occupation zones after the end of World War II, with Vienna also being divided. The terms under which the occupation of Austria ended mandated that Austria become a neutral state, which it did, so its situation ended up being rather like Finland's. Also, a large number of international institutions are based in or have major offices in Vienna; of these, the most important are the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
  • Iga, Japan (Feudal ages): It's where ninjas originated and where most of them lived during the feudal ages in Japan. It became so independent of the rest of Japan that it became a de-facto city state until 1581, when it was destroyed.
  • Prague seems to be the setting of many tales of espionage and intrigue across several genres.
  • Shanghai in World War 2 and just before was justly famed as a city of wickedness. It was also a city of spies. It was an island of something like stability amid the chaos in the hinterland where there was not only general warlordism but a three way war between the Nationalists, Communists, and Japanese. Refugees too poured in from-wherever-sometimes from the other side of the world, depending on who had lost what whim of political violence. Not to mention the Taipans(merchant princes in Asia) of Chinese and foreign citizenship, and the crime lords and the various political loyalties or lack thereof of all of these. And the just plain hired guns who would do anything for a buck. Strategically it was a place for Great Powers to have a finger in for various reasons, notably just keeping an eye on what was going on in China, but sometimes for some other reasons. Germans for instance found it a handy place to coordinate their network watching maritime traffic, a decent enough priority just on the principle of the thing and an urgent one when any troops and munitions that went through the Indian Ocean had a good chance of being intended as a friendly gift to the Afrika Korps.
  • One that is remembered little despite it's effect on history is Leopaldville in the Belgian Congo. It was the center of the competition to get control of the local uranium lode in World War 2.

Tabletop Games

  • The planet Arden in Traveller
  • Top Secret, adventure "Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle. The setting is a small neutral European town full of spies.
  • Al Amarja, the Mediterranean Banana Republic Over the Edge is based in, is crammed to the rafters with weirdness of every description. The multiple espionage agencies fighting each other in the back alleys is one of the most mundane aspects of the setting.
  • Every player character in Paranoia is required to be a member of at least one secret society, and most NPCs are part of one as well. Given that the characters are supposed to be hunting down secret society members, this can get ugly.
  • Columbia in Crimson Skies.
  • The 'newly created international city of Espiona' in the board game Spy Ring.
  • Krakow in Twilight 2000.
  • Eberron goes a step further and has an entire country of spies - Zilargo, especially its capital of Trolanport. It's also the homeland of the gnomes. Adventurers in Zilargo are well advised to Beware the Nice Ones, as Zilargo boasts the most terrifyingly capable secret police force in the setting.
  • Planescape has Sigil, City of Doors, which is a city of spies because it contains portals to every plane in the multiverse and is therefore the most strategically important location imaginable. Legions of ideological/philosophical or political factions, religious groups, business empires, crime syndicates, and both sides in the Blood War have agents here.

Video Games

  • The Milkman Conspiracy of Psychonauts is a complete inversion, subversion, aversion, and otherwise not an example at all in any way of this trope. Any claims to the contrary are likely fabrications created by agents of the Milkman and should be ignored. For those who haven't actually played the game, the Milkman Conspiracy level is a neighborhood completely populated by trenchcoated G-men in Paper Thin Disguises, existing inside the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic man.
  • In Knights of the Old Republic, Manaan in some ways has this role in its nature as an extremely valuable world that maintains neutrality. While both the Republic and Sith have embassies on the world, neither are allowed to carry weapons on the streets and are both extremely limited and forced to combat by proxy. In addition the trial of Sunry, where both he and his victim were being manipulated by the Republic and Sith, is an example of the types of manipulation that go on. The way in which the Republic builds a secret base with the approval of elements of the Selkath rulers also fits into this type of system.

Western Animation

  • Pottsylvania from Rocky and Bullwinkle is shown to be a whole country of spies in the few times it is shown.
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