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. 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. 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. 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.
If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. "The best true spy story I have ever read."-JOHN LE CARRÉ Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist - Shortlisted for the Bailie Giffords Prize in Nonfiction
'Extraordinary.Book Synopsis NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War. 'The world's most important spy since the Second World War. So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying.īen Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket. In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen.
On a warm July evening in 1985, a middle-aged man stood on the pavement of a busy avenue in the heart of Moscow, holding a plastic carrier bag. 'The best true spy story I have ever read' John le Carre Click here to purchase from Rakuten Kobo THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERĪ thrilling Cold War story about a KGB double agent, by one of Britain's greatest historians - now with a new afterword.
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