At the end of March 1575, the Austrian ambassador in Constantinople, Baron David von Ungnad, had sent a dispatch to Vienna, warning Emperor Maximilian II (r. 1564-1576) of a spy sent to Madrid - the other pole of the Habsburg dominions - to spend a year there and obtain intelligence on any useful matter to be known. In essence, Ungnad had intercepted an Ottoman spy through his network of contacts. Ungnad also passed on the name of this spy, a man who had recently converted to Islam known as Ahmed Bey, although the ambassador used his Christian birth name - Markus Penckner. Ungnad had already warned Hans Khevenhüller - the Habsburg (Austrian) ambassador stationed in Madrid - to keep an eye out for any possible suspicious agents sent by the Ottomans. Penckner was supposed to pass through Naples to obtain sensitive intelligence, given the strategic importance of Naples in Habsburg affairs as the seat of the Spanish Viceroyalty. Unfortunately for him, the network of contacts set up by Ungnad proved so efficient that Penckner never reached Dubrovnik, from whence he intended to embark to cross the Adriatic Sea. The spy, therefore, never reached Madrid and returned to Constantinople on 23 April 1575. Eventually Penckner became a spy working for the Imperial embassy, always briefing the Austro-Habsburgs about Transylvanian affairs during Stephen Bathory's election to the Polish throne. Ungnad's efficiency can be framed as a business initiative, given that Ungnad's dispatches were ‘undoubtedly related to his attempts to solicit a pension from King Philip II of Spain and were intended to provide proof of his value as an information provider’. This event clearly shows how active the world of espionage was at the time of these ventures; to conceive of the Ottomans as only capable of counter-espionage operations would be too simplistic, considering that this story has clearly shown their resourcefulness in devising real espionage missions - albeit unsuccessfully in this case.