Across the globe, spies gather in inconspicuous places for discreet conversations. This week, Intelligence Online visits a reservoir of painful memories, the House of Leaves in Tirana, where the secret police hounded the communist regime's opponents and kept the entire population under surveillance.
Right in Tirana's city centre, opposite the Orthodox cathedral from where the voices of the male choir drift during service, the name of the building sheltered behind a line of trees is almost bucolic: the House of Leaves. The nickname comes from the ivy that climbs its faded walls. But the former maternity hospital, built in the early 1930s, has left scars that are still raw in Albanian memories.
From 1944 to 1991, the House of Leaves
