THE SPY AND THE TRAITOR
THE GREATEST ESPIONAGE STORY OF THE COLD WAR
BEN MACINTYRE Viking, 384pp, £25, Oldie price £14.96 inc p&p
This is not just a biography of Oleg Gordievsky, the most valuable Soviet defector of the Cold War, but a dual portrait of Gordievsky and CIA traitor Aldrich Ames. Disillusioned after the Prague Spring, Gordievsky started spying for Britain in 1974 and defected in 1985, while Ames, who was driven by material greed, spied for the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1994. ‘Macintyre has terrific material to work with, and in general he keeps a firm grip on it,’ wrote Dorothy Gallagher in the New York Times. ‘But in recounting every aspect of espionage tradecraft, in addition to each problem that arises in the courtship of Gordievsky by British intelligence and the histories of all of the many MI6 agents who ran him, not to mention the ever-so-complicated details of Gordievsky’s “exfiltration” from the Soviet Union, Macintyre’s story sometimes bogs down.’
Spectator reviewer Gordon Corera found that Macintyre ‘brings the story to life in vivid technicolor with fascinating new details. He tells it with all the verve we have come to expect from such an accomplished writer. As well as Gordievsky himself, Macintyre says he has had the assistance of all the living MI6 officers who worked on the case. This provides an unusually detailed sense of what the relationship between an agent and a spy service really looks like.’ In his review for the Guardian, Luke Harding praised the book for revealing ‘the dramatic role played by MI6 in recruiting and cultivating a serving KGB insider – and keeping him alive against the odds. Gordievsky’s British contacts were a colourful bunch. Some were upperclass cold war adventurers. Others were gifted working-class linguists recruited from Oxbridge. Women played a crucial part. All realised Gordievsky was unique… The result is a dazzling non-fiction thriller and an intimate portrait of high-stakes espionage.’
‘He brings the story to life in vivid technicolor with fascinating new details’