Blaise Metreweli is about to make history. In three months time she will take over as head of MI6, the first woman to fill the position, after serving as director general of technology and innovation for the spy service.
47-year-old Metreweli studies anthropology at Cambridge University and was a member of its acclaimed rowing team in 1997. Some of her team mates went on to become Olympian athletes but she dropped out of sight.
From the age of 22, she was mentioned only in official records as a recipient of honors "for service to British foreign policy." She has no social media footprint.
Metreweli joined MI6 in 1999. She was posted to the Middle East and is fluent in Arabic. She made her way up the ranks, over the years until landing the prestigious job as leader of the organization.
The Daily Mail reported on Friday that Metreweli's family has a dark past. Her grandfather Constantine Dobrowolski, was a collaborator with the Nazi regime and a spy for Adolf Hitler's Germany.
Dubbed 'the butcher, Dobrowolski defected from the Soviet Army to become one of the most important Nazi spies in Ukraine. Even when his family fled the war, he remained under the occupation of the Nazis, German archives showed.
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Documents for Constantine Dobrowolski Nazi spy and collaborator, grandfather of incoming MI6 chief
Hundreds of documents in the Freiburg archives detailed his role as "agent number 30," including his acts of revenge against the Russians, for the murder of his family and for stealing their property when they Ukraine was conquered during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
The soviets put a price of 50,000 rubles on his head ($250,000 in today's currency) and called him the Ukrainian people's biggest enemy.
Dobrowolski took pride in his participation in the extermination of Jews and had killed hundreds of his Ukrainian countrymen. He was rumored to joke about the sexual assault of female Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust.
Now his granddaughter will become Britain's top spy.
Constantine Dobrowolski,