Espionage, the British spy-turned-novelist John le Carré observed, “is the secret theater of our society.” Netflix’s new series The Spy, starring Sacha Baron Cohen as the real-life Israeli intelligence operative Eli Cohen, is good theater. But the real story is even more incredible.

Eli Cohen is Israel’s most famous spy and with good reason. The Egyptian-born Jew, using the alias Kamel Amin Thaabet, rose to the upper echelons of Syrian society in the 1960s. As the film depicts, Syria’s then-president, Amin al-Hafiz, reportedly offered Cohen the position of deputy defense minister.