Frederick Vanden Heuvel

Count Frederick "Fanny" Vanden Heuvel was a British intelligence officer and count of the Papacy during both world wars. It was either during or shortly after World War I when Vanden Heuvel was first hired by Robert Vansittart, 1st Baron Vansittart to gather intelligence for him. Around 1929, Vanden Heuvel became a member of the newly established Vansittart's Private Detective Agency, an entity established and co-operated by Vansittart and Claude Dansey to gather intelligence in Europe. In 1936, the Private Detective Agency was merged into the Z Organisation, an intelligence agency established by Dansey and Stewart Menzies to operate entirely independently of the Passport Control Office network of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Vanden Heuvel was hired into the Z Organisation, where he was given the designation Z-1.

Vanden Heuvel also maintained a legitimate business venture as the director of Eno's Fruit Salts, and later the Beecham Group. His business interests allowed him to obtain information from the pharmaceutical industry and the opiumregie, and his high-ranking membership in the Catholic Church allowed him access to the vast intelligence networks that had sprung up in the orbit of the Vatican City before and during World War II.

During the Cold War, Vanden Heuvel remained in the SIS until his retirement age, and worked with Wilfred Hindle, the author of Portrait of a Newspaper and Foreign Correspondent.