SAS soldier’s ‘real life’ story of saving Gorby is ‘utter rubbish’
IT IS the sensational memoir of a real-life James Bond – an SAS soldier revealing how he single-handedly foiled a plot to assassinate President Mikhail Gorbachev in the dying days of the Cold War.
But the newly published book Pilgrim Spy by ‘Tom Shore’ – a nom de plume – has been dismissed as ‘utter rubbish’ by an officer who commanded the Special Air Service regiment.
Some readers have already noted a resemblance between the ‘true story’ of the events in East Berlin in 1989 and the plot of an entirely fictional thriller, Quiller KGB, by author Adam Hall. In addition, sizeable passages of Pilgrim Spy are lifted from Wikipedia – including a description of the terror group behind the assassination plot, the Red Army Faction.
The former SAS chief told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The referred [Pilgrim Spy] is utter rubbish, but I suspect it will make the publishers much money.’
The former SAS chief also attacked Shore’s decision to dedicate the book to one of the elite regiment’s most respected figures, the late Brigadier Andy Massey – who is credited with developing the SAS’s anti-terrorist role.
Shore refused to reveal his real identity but said he is 66 years old.
He said he was handpicked by SAS and MI6 chiefs for secret missions in Eastern Europe from 1985 to 1989. Publisher Hodder and Stoughton backed its author and said it checked he had served in the SAS.
The publishers described his use of Wikipedia as ‘sloppy but not criminal’.
The author and publishers claimed not to have heard of the book Quiller KGB. The Ministry of Defence refused to comment.