The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by
Ben Macintyre
If anyone could be considered a
Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was
Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet
institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's
communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for
Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man
in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a
decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn
the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless
intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the
United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer
to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never
revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew
obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level
source.
Unfolding
the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet
Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's
nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best
yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a
world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and
the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the
future of nations.
Eye Spy podcast: Inside the secret and dangerous world of private
detectives
Many
people wonder what it would be like to be a famous private investigator like
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Using
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