In 1973, Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet intelligence agent became a double agent working for the British intelligence service, MI6.  Gordievsky was an unlikely spy since his parents were both KGB agents and he had lived a fairly affluent life with access to all the best education and opportunities the Soviet Union could provide. But after his first posting in London in 1968, he began to see through the lies he had been told about the West and disillusioned by the pervasive criminality in the Soviet system and decided he would do something about it.

After approaching the British in 1973 to convey his intetions to spy for them he begin to live a double life, never revealing his true identity to anyone. For the next ten years he worked himself up to the top position at the Soviet Embassy in London, privy to much important information regarding Soviet diplomatic strategy and military information which he passed onto the British. He was even responsible for creating briefing documents for Prime Minister Thatcher  and President Reagan to use in their preparations to meet Gorbachev!

Although the British carefully guarded the infomation garnered from Gordievsky sometimes they had to share information with their allies, like Finland or the Americans and their intelligence service, the CIA.  Soon the CIA became obsessed with finding out the identity of the British source so they could better assess the reliability and context of where the information originated. They assigned this task to none other than Aldrich Ames, who had just begun spying for the Soviets!

Completely unknown to the British or to the CIA itself, Ames begins to make inroads into determining the identity of this double agent and planned to reveal it to the KGB in order to prove his worth. Meanwhile, Gordievsky begins to suspect that all is not well and he must quickly decide whether to try and ride out any suspicion or whether he has actually been exposed and must now defect to the West.

Based on real events and interviews with the main actors, Macintrye has created what  John Le Carrè calls, “[t]he best true spy story I have ever read.” Alternating between vivid descriptions of  the risks Gordievsky took to get information and the high risk plan that the British agents implemented in order to rescue him, this book keeps you riveted to the very end!

Brenda’s Rating: ****(4 Out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Marian, Sharon and Ken

Book Study worthy? Yes!

Read in ebook format.