High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Captain Sigismund Payne-Best (1885?1978) was a British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, more commonly known as MI-6) agent during World War I and World War II. As head of the highly secret Section Z in the Netherlands, Best was captured by the Gestapo in the November 9, 1939 Venlo Incident. Best's operations in the Netherlands stood at the crosswinds of a political storm. He had, on the orders of London but against all tradecraft, combined his NOC operations with those of Major Richard Stevens, a less-experienced operative who operated from the British Embassy as the head of a notional "Passport Control Office". The PCO (which, like Section Z, operated throughout Europe) was compromised before its operations were combined with those of Section Z, and thus it was a simple matter for the Germans to mount sting and counterintelligence operations against British agents throughout Europe.