Modern espionage
is not about spies.
It's about systems.
Gripping Geopolitical Thriller
Based on real events
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When a delivery boy is killed in New York, no one imagines it will matter.
But buried in a routine police report is a detail that leads to a startling discovery: a London fintech darling quietly routing millions of everyday payments into Iran’s missile program.
Mossad sends in James Ashford, a Director-General’s special operative known as the Actor—the man they send when the truth isn’t meant to be found.
As the investigation deepens, he’s joined by unlikely allies:
a disillusioned lawyer, a journalist chasing... See more
But buried in a routine police report is a detail that leads to a startling discovery: a London fintech darling quietly routing millions of everyday payments into Iran’s missile program.
Mossad sends in James Ashford, a Director-General’s special operative known as the Actor—the man they send when the truth isn’t meant to be found.
As the investigation deepens, he’s joined by unlikely allies:
a disillusioned lawyer, a journalist chasing... See more
To the world,
To those inside,
LIVES
True stories of people who built themselves, pushed limits,
and lived with the consequences.
The rest is fiction.
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Schedule Max to Speak
Each talk is built from the inside — drawn from years operating at
the intersection of finance, intelligence structures, and geopolitical pressure.
the intersection of finance, intelligence structures, and geopolitical pressure.
Talks include:
Modern Espionage & Power
Espionage today is not about spies in trench coats. It is about systems — data, access, leverage, and the quiet mechanics of influence. Max draws on his experience building companies across four continents to explain what modern intelligence operations actually look like from the inside, and what that means for institutions and leaders navigating a world of permanent, invisible competition.
Financial Systems as Weapons
The most consequential battlefields of the 21st century are not physical. They are financial. From SWIFT disconnection to shadow banking networks tied to geopolitical actors, Max explains how money became the primary instrument of state power — and what that means for companies, institutions, and individuals operating in a world where every transaction carries political risk.
Storytelling in Geopolitics
The gap between what is happening and what people believe is happening is always a story gap. Max explores how narratives are constructed, maintained, and eventually broken — in corporate scandals, political crises, and the slow collapse of institutional trust. Drawing on his background in both business and fiction, this talk offers a framework for understanding how the story of power gets written, and by whom.
Get In Touch
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Response within a few working days.
had learned two things about New York: that nobody looked at you, and that everybody needed something from you at the same time. He moved through the city like water moves through rock — finding the gaps, following the pressure, arriving where he was supposed to be without anyone being able to say exactly how.His name was Elias Osei. Twenty-two years old. He had come from Accra with a cousin's address and a phone number that turned out to be wrong, and had spent the first three weeks sleeping in a room he shared with seven men he did not know in a building that smelled of mold and cooking oil and something else he could not identify but that he understood to be desperation. He had found the delivery work through an app. The app did not care where he was from.
It was a Thursday evening in March when he
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been