Sex espionage
Cloak-and-dagger activities predate the Sumer-Akkad conflicts. Spies and counterspies kept city-states from falling prey to one another. Succeeding empires employed spies to inform them of what their erstwhile friends were really up to.
Those captured were tortured beyond endurance to reveal what they knew. Then again, the best intelligence and counterintelligence men and women were never captured, living out their lives in safe retirement.
Jason Matthews was one of the few who got away with it. He kept sticking his head into the KGB’s mouth so blatantly, it’s a wonder the mouth didn’t snap shut.
Matthews’ memoirs lack John le Carré’s literary adroitness and Ian Fleming’s glibness. But their authenticity is beyond question. He focuses on the fact that Russia had a mole in the CIA, while the US had at least one in the KGB. So well entrenched is each that even their respective officials are not in the loop.
Sex is an integral part of spying. Moscow figured: why not train their women operatives to get rid of their inhibition and bed their foes with little ado? Which included gay sex. Volunteers were called for. They became known as Red Sparrows. Matthew uses the name for the title of his story.
Recently filmed, this reviewer found the movie confusing at times. Not so the novel, which is clear. In her early 20s during the Cold War, Dannushka is a diehard Communist. Yet in time she finds the American side preferable. Rising through the Red ranks, even tortured by the KGB as the suspected American mole — which she is — she is pronounced loyal. Little do they know.
The author throws in historical titbits without distracting us from the plot — such as that the leading sniper of World War II was a Soviet woman soldier. Whether Putin’s Russia uses sparrows is unclear. There’s no evidence that Trump’s intelligence services condone the practice.
If you like spy thrillers, read Red Sparrow. You’ll be glad you did.
For once, I won’t say its pages — 560 — are too many. This reviewer would consider it a boon if Jason Matthews penned a biography of Richard Sorge, rated the greatest spy in history. Even if it was the Japanese who uncovered him.