The Spy and the Traitor

For author Ben MacIntyre, Oleg Gordievsky belongs in the pantheon of world changing spies. A KGB colonel at the height of the Cold War, he was in fact an agent for the British Secret Service. The book opens with his flat in Moscow being bugged, cameras installed and a light coating of radioactive dust sprinkled on his clothes and shoes. Oleg is returning to Moscow and it's clear his traitorous activity of the past decade has been discovered. The noose is tightening and Oleg is quickly running out of options.

MacIntyre is a meticulous researcher and interviewed nearly every British agent working with Gordievsky and several Russians as well. He creates a tense historical account that reads like a slow burning thriller. But this isn't movie spy-craft and what becomes critical to Oleg's story is a Mars bar, a Safeway bag and a soiled diaper.

Mundane details certainly, Oleg is turned while playing badminton of all things, but let's not discount the world-changing effect he had on geo-political relations. He may very well have averted nuclear disaster and helped usher in a new age of glasnost. An eye opening account of old world spy-craft where the KGB, CIA and MI6 converge.

A full review for our Non-Fiction November pick here: https://youtu.be/qoz3wJAL-Xs