THE SPY Has to TRAVEL

Freck Vreeland was raised in privilege by a legendary arbiter of taste. He boarded at Groton, studied at Yale, and befriended Jackie Kennedy-then things got interesting. Here, ahead of his upcoming memoir, the high society secret agent tells all.

- JAMES REGINATO

"One of my earliest memories is watching my mother floating across our living room in London. She was practicing the rumba with her dance instructor, sashaying to the tinny phonograph music. I stood in the doorway with my older brother, Tim, and drank in her colorful beauty while I could-we would not be allowed to stay long. All too soon, our nanny, Letty, gently pulled us away and led us upstairs to the nursery for our supper."

So begins a memoir written by Frederick Vreeland. His mother, fashion legend Diana Vreeland, needs no introduction. Freck, as he's called, long eschewed publicity, largely thanks to the nature of his career: He was a spy. But recently he wrote down his story, with the help of his wife Sandra Zwollo. Shopping his manuscript around, they encountered difficulty finding an agent and a publisher. "Too much privilege," one agent told them. Of course, it's what you do with your privilege that counts.

After being delivered on June 24, 1927, at a hospital in Danbury, Connecticut, Freck was whisked to his paternal grandfather's estate outside Brewster, New York. He was not quite two when, thanks to his banker father Reed Vreeland's assignment to the Guaranty Trust Company's London branch, he and Tim moved into an elegant rowhouse designed by John Nash that overlooked Regent's Park. The living room, where Diana had her rumba lessons, was painted bright yellow, he remembers. Along with his English nanny, the staff included a butler and a chauffeur, who kept the engine of the family's Bugatti "clean enough to picnic on."