[jason taylor]

One time in real life MI 5 was running a notational agent. Then a big op went down which the agent should have spotted from his location(I think it was Torch). So they gave him notational cancer, a notational death, and a notational obituary and fed all this through their double to explain why they hadn't seen this. Naturally the Germans bought the whole thing. It required going to the paperwork of drawing up a legend for a new notational agent to replace the old one as even German intelligence would not believe that resurrection was a normal event. But no one was inconvenienced by that except the Germans and some poor clerk back at MI5 headquarters.