The job is treated as a rather casual affair for the intelligence agents. Several surveillance agents are bugging an apartment, or planting hidden microphones in the place to pick up incriminating evidence. The story starts in the heart of the Soviet regime, in Moscow. Oleg Gordievsky flees Moscow and the heart of the Soviet Union to be extracted at a specific point, under KGB surveillance the entire time. For the spy’s capture would mean certain death. And with this information, the author creates a nail-biting, true account of exfiltrating a spy from the Soviet Union in secrecy. The author also had access to a variety of intelligence archives and information kept within them, particularly regarding this true story. It is by Ben Macintyre, an author who had access to intelligence agents who knew Gordievsky and agents who interacted with the man. “The Spy and the Traitor” is a story about the KGB, a Russian Intelligence agency and secret police force and their spy, Oleg Gordievsky, and his betrayal of the Soviets to Britain. (Sept.DecemThe British flag entered the public domain, but I found it in Wikimedia Commons. The book has a startling relevancy to the news of the day, from examples of fake news to the 1984 British elections in which “Moscow was prepared to use dirty tricks and hidden interference to swing a democratic election in favor of its chosen candidate.” Macintyre has produced a timely and insightful page-turner.
In a feat of real authorial dexterity, Macintyre accurately portrays the long-game banality of spycraft-the lead time and persistence in planning-with such clarity and propulsive verve that the book often feels like a thriller. In Macintyre’s telling, Aldrich Ames, the CIA agent turned KGB operative who gave up Gordievsky’s cover, functions as a foil and a vehicle for moral comparison between the KGB and MI6. Building on in-depth interviews and other supplementary research, Macintyre shows Gordievsky expertly navigating the “wilderness of mirrors” that made up the daily existence of a Cold War spy-passing microfilm, worrying that his wife will turn him in to the KGB, battling an unexpected dosage of truth serum. Macintyre ( Rogue Heroes) recounts the exploits of Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB agent turned British spy responsible for “the single largest ‘operational download’ in MI6 history,” in this captivating espionage tale.
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