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The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
On a warm July evening in 1985, a middle-aged man stood on the pavement of a busy avenue in the heart of Moscow, holding a plastic carrier bag. In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket.
The man was a spy for MI6. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia.
So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever...
The man was a spy for MI6. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia.
So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever...
384 pages, Hardcover
First published September 18, 2018
About the author
Ben Macintyre
37 books3,234 followersBen Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (U.K.) and the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 6,061 reviews
June 1, 2021
Warning: Do not start the final third unless you have nothing else to do.
Literally could not stop—I was at the edge of my seat.
What. A. Story. Riveting and unputdownable. Reads like a movie instead of a real life tale.
Will be reading more Ben Macintyre.
_____
*EDIT* I've since read FIVE more Macintyre books:
A Spy Among Friends (5 stars),
Operation Mincemeat (5 stars),
Rogue Heroes (5 stars),
Agent Sonya (5 stars), and
Double Cross (3 stars)
— and I'm still looking forward to reading the rest of his books.
Literally could not stop—I was at the edge of my seat.
What. A. Story. Riveting and unputdownable. Reads like a movie instead of a real life tale.
Will be reading more Ben Macintyre.
_____
*EDIT* I've since read FIVE more Macintyre books:
A Spy Among Friends (5 stars),
Operation Mincemeat (5 stars),
Rogue Heroes (5 stars),
Agent Sonya (5 stars), and
Double Cross (3 stars)
— and I'm still looking forward to reading the rest of his books.
December 18, 2022
5 " superb, exciting, edge of your seat" stars !!
10th Favorite Read of 2018 Award
Mr. MacIntyre has written a superb and thrilling book about one of our foremost living spies.
Mr. Oleg Gordievsky was Russian KGB that became an agent for M-16 in England and over the course of the Cold War was able to feed England important information that may have led not only to our world being safe from nuclear disaster but perhaps also to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The author was able to interview Mr. Gordievsky over several visits as well as many other M-16, KGB, CIA and other European secret agents. He also read countless other source materials but was not privy to secret documents held by the superpowers.
Mr. Gordievsky's two ex wives, colleagues, friends and enemies were also given a voice in this riveting and information packed book.
This reader was enthralled, thrilled and riveted. Mr. MacIntyre has a supreme ability to write a true story with both a factual and compassionate touch injecting just enough humor about some of the antics and errors that occurred by various players along the way. I also loved Margaret Thatcher's involvement in this story and her admiration and support of this gentleman and who was known to her as Mr. Collins. Mr. Gordievsky greatly assisted her in improving Anglo-Russian relations.
Do yourself a favor and pick this up for your favorite Uncle at Christmas but read it before you gift it. Shhhh I won't tell.
Mr. Oleg Gordievsky
10th Favorite Read of 2018 Award
Mr. MacIntyre has written a superb and thrilling book about one of our foremost living spies.
Mr. Oleg Gordievsky was Russian KGB that became an agent for M-16 in England and over the course of the Cold War was able to feed England important information that may have led not only to our world being safe from nuclear disaster but perhaps also to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The author was able to interview Mr. Gordievsky over several visits as well as many other M-16, KGB, CIA and other European secret agents. He also read countless other source materials but was not privy to secret documents held by the superpowers.
Mr. Gordievsky's two ex wives, colleagues, friends and enemies were also given a voice in this riveting and information packed book.
This reader was enthralled, thrilled and riveted. Mr. MacIntyre has a supreme ability to write a true story with both a factual and compassionate touch injecting just enough humor about some of the antics and errors that occurred by various players along the way. I also loved Margaret Thatcher's involvement in this story and her admiration and support of this gentleman and who was known to her as Mr. Collins. Mr. Gordievsky greatly assisted her in improving Anglo-Russian relations.
Do yourself a favor and pick this up for your favorite Uncle at Christmas but read it before you gift it. Shhhh I won't tell.
Mr. Oleg Gordievsky
April 21, 2023
“As far as [Oleg Gordievsky] could tell, no one had followed him as he entered the familiar apartment block on Leninsky Prospekt and took the elevator to the eighth floor. He had not been inside the family flat since January…The first lock on the front door opened easily, and then the second. But the door would not budge. The third lock on the door, an old-fashioned dead bolt dating back to the construction of the apartment block, had been locked…But Gordievsky never used the third lock. Indeed, he had never had the key. That must mean that someone with a skeleton key had been inside, and on leaving had mistakenly triple-locked the door. That someone must have been the KGB…The fear of the previous week crystallized in a freezing rush, with the chilling, paralyzing recognition that his apartment had been entered, searched, and probably bugged. He was under suspicion. Someone had betrayed him. The KGB was watching him. The spy was being spied upon by his fellow spies…”
- Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
Were we to judge the Cold War simply on the exploits of human spies, the Soviet Union would be declared the undisputed winner.
Starting even before the Second World War, Communist agents worked their way into high places in American government, passing on intelligence to the Kremlin. During the war, Soviet spies infiltrated the supposedly-super-secret Manhattan Project, advancing the USSR’s work on an atomic bomb by an appreciable factor. Meanwhile, in Great Britain, the Cambridge Five gave Joseph Stalin an inside look at MI6. After the war, as tensions heightened – and long after the inhumane conditions of the Communist experiment were well known – these turncoats continued to apprise their Soviet masters of western intelligence operations, leading to the deaths of countless men and women.
These successes are not all that surprising.
Democracies are a bad place to keep secrets. They are free and open. They have an aggressively robust media looking to make a scoop. They have the rule of law. Kim Philby, for instance, the most infamous of western spies, was never charged for his crimes, much less convicted, because of the difficult legal hurdles. Philby remained free, and ultimately fled to the Soviet Union. Had the roles been reversed – had he been a Soviet citizen suspected of spying against his own people – his brains would have been blown all over the walls of the Lubyanka Prison, hard evidence or not.
Also, there is the matter of capitalism itself, and the entrepreneurial spirit that has encouraged those with access to intel to occasionally pass that on to foreign powers for considerable remuneration.
The west has had their own espionage successes, of course, especially with signals intelligence. But by and large, it feels like the KGB spent forty years running laps around MI6 and the CIA.
That’s what drew me to Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor. In telling the tale of Oleg Gordievsky, a British-controlled mole in the midst of the KGB, he provides a nice counterbalance to the many well-known embarrassments and failures of the western intelligence agencies.
***
At this point in his career, Macintyre has fully reached corporate brand status. He writes a book about special operations; that book gets made into a television series; and then the process starts again. He has a style, that style has worked in the past, and it is something that he is comfortable repeating.
It is also quite comforting to read, even if no new literary ground is tilled.
The Spy and the Traitor is slick, assured, and polished. As in his book on Philby – A Spy Among Friends – Macintyre starts with a quick introduction to bait his hook, then settles into a narrative that combines standard biography with a John le Carré thriller. We are introduced to our hero – and Oleg Gordievsky is certainly treated as such – and learn about his family background, upbringing, career, and personal life.
The portraiture of Gordievsky is a bit shallow. Macintyre struggles to dig below the surface, but can’t quite make the man come alive as a person. This might be a function of Gordievsky’s essential decency. Unlike Philby – a charming, hard-drinking, brilliant betrayer of trusts and lives – Gordievsky is kind of a square. According to Macintyre, it seems that Gordievsky did what he did out of a genuine belief that the Soviet system was rotted, and that given the proper application of force, it might all tumble down.
Even if Gordievsky is less than a magnetic protagonist, Macintyre packs these pages with tradecraft, spy-slang, and a white-knuckled procession of dead-drops, brush passes, cutouts, and extractions. The pace is smooth and fast and politely refuses to overstay its welcome.
***
Opposing Gordievsky is a far less reputable – though much more intriguing – antagonist: Aldrich Ames. A somewhat-gross looking man with bad teeth, bad glasses, a bad haircut, and a terrible mustache, Ames was an unspectacular nonentity who not only managed to become a CIA agent, but failed his way upwards into positions of extreme sensitivity.
Short of money, trying to impress a woman, Ames reached out to the Soviets and eagerly identified foreign agents so that he could buy a new house and a silver Jaguar, with enough left over to cap his teeth. Meanwhile, the KGB used his information to root out and kill – repeat, kill – the individuals Ames exposed.
My chief critique of The Spy and the Traitor is that Macintyre didn’t spend more time on Ames. The guy is absolute rubbish, yet holds the stage much better than Gordievsky. I would’ve liked a deeper examination into this banal, rumpled bureaucrat, so entirely self-absorbed and greedy that he didn’t hesitate to facilitate executions in order to afford an Alfa Romeo.
***
The Spy and the Traitor reads easy, but is clearly the product of a huge amount of work. Untangling the threads of espionage operations is notoriously tricky, because it all exists in a shadow realm of misinformation, disinformation, and divided loyalties. It is the classic liar’s dilemma: if a spy tells you he’s lying, is that the truth?
Macintyre has certainly done the legwork, interviewing as many participants as possible, including Gordievsky himself. For all that, he is refreshingly candid about the impossibility of an unassailable objective truth. Indeed, in an afterword to the paperback edition, he discusses the response to his book by the intelligence community, including some of their criticisms.
Pushback is to be expected, and hardly something that worries me. After all, as James Jesus Angleton once said – borrowing from T.S. Eliot – spy-craft is “a wilderness of mirrors.” Up may be down; down may be up; the defector may be a spy; the mole-catcher might be the mole. Given that he had to go through the looking glass, Macintyre seems to have done a decent job, though some gaps still remain.
***
The title to this book is fascinatingly susceptible to different meanings. Most obviously it refers to Gordievsky the spy, and Ames the traitor. Another interpretation is that Gordievsky is both spy and traitor in one. Or perhaps the whole thing can be reversed, and Gordievsky is the traitor, while Ames the spy.
It all depends on perspective, and as Macintyre notes, there are many in the Russian Federation – especially now, as it seeks to rebuild the contours of the USSR – who despise Gordievsky. Undoubtedly, they feel as strongly about Gordievsky as I feel about Ames, and I feel pretty strongly about Ames.
Macintyre is very clear on where he stands, believing that history and morality are on Gordievsky’s side. Spy or traitor, traitor or spy, Gordievsky certainly seems that rarest of persons, willing to risk his life not for cause, country, or cash, but for the principles of humanity.
- Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
Were we to judge the Cold War simply on the exploits of human spies, the Soviet Union would be declared the undisputed winner.
Starting even before the Second World War, Communist agents worked their way into high places in American government, passing on intelligence to the Kremlin. During the war, Soviet spies infiltrated the supposedly-super-secret Manhattan Project, advancing the USSR’s work on an atomic bomb by an appreciable factor. Meanwhile, in Great Britain, the Cambridge Five gave Joseph Stalin an inside look at MI6. After the war, as tensions heightened – and long after the inhumane conditions of the Communist experiment were well known – these turncoats continued to apprise their Soviet masters of western intelligence operations, leading to the deaths of countless men and women.
These successes are not all that surprising.
Democracies are a bad place to keep secrets. They are free and open. They have an aggressively robust media looking to make a scoop. They have the rule of law. Kim Philby, for instance, the most infamous of western spies, was never charged for his crimes, much less convicted, because of the difficult legal hurdles. Philby remained free, and ultimately fled to the Soviet Union. Had the roles been reversed – had he been a Soviet citizen suspected of spying against his own people – his brains would have been blown all over the walls of the Lubyanka Prison, hard evidence or not.
Also, there is the matter of capitalism itself, and the entrepreneurial spirit that has encouraged those with access to intel to occasionally pass that on to foreign powers for considerable remuneration.
The west has had their own espionage successes, of course, especially with signals intelligence. But by and large, it feels like the KGB spent forty years running laps around MI6 and the CIA.
That’s what drew me to Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor. In telling the tale of Oleg Gordievsky, a British-controlled mole in the midst of the KGB, he provides a nice counterbalance to the many well-known embarrassments and failures of the western intelligence agencies.
***
At this point in his career, Macintyre has fully reached corporate brand status. He writes a book about special operations; that book gets made into a television series; and then the process starts again. He has a style, that style has worked in the past, and it is something that he is comfortable repeating.
It is also quite comforting to read, even if no new literary ground is tilled.
The Spy and the Traitor is slick, assured, and polished. As in his book on Philby – A Spy Among Friends – Macintyre starts with a quick introduction to bait his hook, then settles into a narrative that combines standard biography with a John le Carré thriller. We are introduced to our hero – and Oleg Gordievsky is certainly treated as such – and learn about his family background, upbringing, career, and personal life.
The portraiture of Gordievsky is a bit shallow. Macintyre struggles to dig below the surface, but can’t quite make the man come alive as a person. This might be a function of Gordievsky’s essential decency. Unlike Philby – a charming, hard-drinking, brilliant betrayer of trusts and lives – Gordievsky is kind of a square. According to Macintyre, it seems that Gordievsky did what he did out of a genuine belief that the Soviet system was rotted, and that given the proper application of force, it might all tumble down.
Even if Gordievsky is less than a magnetic protagonist, Macintyre packs these pages with tradecraft, spy-slang, and a white-knuckled procession of dead-drops, brush passes, cutouts, and extractions. The pace is smooth and fast and politely refuses to overstay its welcome.
***
Opposing Gordievsky is a far less reputable – though much more intriguing – antagonist: Aldrich Ames. A somewhat-gross looking man with bad teeth, bad glasses, a bad haircut, and a terrible mustache, Ames was an unspectacular nonentity who not only managed to become a CIA agent, but failed his way upwards into positions of extreme sensitivity.
Short of money, trying to impress a woman, Ames reached out to the Soviets and eagerly identified foreign agents so that he could buy a new house and a silver Jaguar, with enough left over to cap his teeth. Meanwhile, the KGB used his information to root out and kill – repeat, kill – the individuals Ames exposed.
My chief critique of The Spy and the Traitor is that Macintyre didn’t spend more time on Ames. The guy is absolute rubbish, yet holds the stage much better than Gordievsky. I would’ve liked a deeper examination into this banal, rumpled bureaucrat, so entirely self-absorbed and greedy that he didn’t hesitate to facilitate executions in order to afford an Alfa Romeo.
***
The Spy and the Traitor reads easy, but is clearly the product of a huge amount of work. Untangling the threads of espionage operations is notoriously tricky, because it all exists in a shadow realm of misinformation, disinformation, and divided loyalties. It is the classic liar’s dilemma: if a spy tells you he’s lying, is that the truth?
Macintyre has certainly done the legwork, interviewing as many participants as possible, including Gordievsky himself. For all that, he is refreshingly candid about the impossibility of an unassailable objective truth. Indeed, in an afterword to the paperback edition, he discusses the response to his book by the intelligence community, including some of their criticisms.
Pushback is to be expected, and hardly something that worries me. After all, as James Jesus Angleton once said – borrowing from T.S. Eliot – spy-craft is “a wilderness of mirrors.” Up may be down; down may be up; the defector may be a spy; the mole-catcher might be the mole. Given that he had to go through the looking glass, Macintyre seems to have done a decent job, though some gaps still remain.
***
The title to this book is fascinatingly susceptible to different meanings. Most obviously it refers to Gordievsky the spy, and Ames the traitor. Another interpretation is that Gordievsky is both spy and traitor in one. Or perhaps the whole thing can be reversed, and Gordievsky is the traitor, while Ames the spy.
It all depends on perspective, and as Macintyre notes, there are many in the Russian Federation – especially now, as it seeks to rebuild the contours of the USSR – who despise Gordievsky. Undoubtedly, they feel as strongly about Gordievsky as I feel about Ames, and I feel pretty strongly about Ames.
Macintyre is very clear on where he stands, believing that history and morality are on Gordievsky’s side. Spy or traitor, traitor or spy, Gordievsky certainly seems that rarest of persons, willing to risk his life not for cause, country, or cash, but for the principles of humanity.
August 16, 2021
“The spy and the traitor” is a marvelous story of a double agent’s professional and personal life during the Cold War named Oleg Gordievsky.
Oleg was born in 1938 in a Family which all it’s members was KGB officers so he lived his predetermined destiny to become a successful KGB agent in order to gain respect of his family and community. But he had an enormous difference with his colleagues from the very beginning of his career because he was open minded, a keen history and economy reader, a perceptive observer of soviet oppression and above all, he adored western values like liberty and democracy. As a result of his detest toward KGB and Soviet Union government , when he sent to the soviet embassy in Copenhagen (the capital of Denmark), an MI6 agent contacted him and proposed him to work for them as a double agent. He immediately accepted the offer and started to shed light on The whole KBG operation abroad, the organization hierarchy, KGB spies in western countries and every other possible useful information. These highly valuable intelligence that Gordievsky passed to MI6 over 11 years made a great advantage for them and led the KGB to a huge embarrassment and destruction from within.
Living under the reins of a totalitarian regime in Iran, I personally sympathize with Gordievsky’s feelings to the marrow. He was not a traitor at all, on the contrary he was a splendid soldier of liberty who damaged the most wicked organization on earth severely in the sheer hope of bringing his people some freedom over time. I strongly admire him and would do the same if I were him.
The book is quite intriguing, enthralling and extremely stressful ( especially when the author explains the operation PIMLICO which was a complex plan implemented by MI6 to bring Gordievsky out from Moscow to Finland, and finally to London).
Oleg was born in 1938 in a Family which all it’s members was KGB officers so he lived his predetermined destiny to become a successful KGB agent in order to gain respect of his family and community. But he had an enormous difference with his colleagues from the very beginning of his career because he was open minded, a keen history and economy reader, a perceptive observer of soviet oppression and above all, he adored western values like liberty and democracy. As a result of his detest toward KGB and Soviet Union government , when he sent to the soviet embassy in Copenhagen (the capital of Denmark), an MI6 agent contacted him and proposed him to work for them as a double agent. He immediately accepted the offer and started to shed light on The whole KBG operation abroad, the organization hierarchy, KGB spies in western countries and every other possible useful information. These highly valuable intelligence that Gordievsky passed to MI6 over 11 years made a great advantage for them and led the KGB to a huge embarrassment and destruction from within.
Living under the reins of a totalitarian regime in Iran, I personally sympathize with Gordievsky’s feelings to the marrow. He was not a traitor at all, on the contrary he was a splendid soldier of liberty who damaged the most wicked organization on earth severely in the sheer hope of bringing his people some freedom over time. I strongly admire him and would do the same if I were him.
The book is quite intriguing, enthralling and extremely stressful ( especially when the author explains the operation PIMLICO which was a complex plan implemented by MI6 to bring Gordievsky out from Moscow to Finland, and finally to London).
June 10, 2022
Undoubtedly, relations between Russia and the UK are at their lowest for many years, which, perhaps, makes this book even more relevant. Ben Macintyre takes us back to the 1980’s and the Cold War, with his usual brand of, almost schoolboy, enthusiasm and ability to give the most important, political events, the human angle necessary to make you care about those involved. This, then, is the story of ‘Operation Pimlico;’ an emergency escape plan by which MI6 planned to remove Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer, and British spy, from Russia and spirit him away to safety in England.
We begin with the biography of Gordievsky, the son of a KGB officer, who grew up all too aware of how those around him often lived a double life and whose fascination with foreign countries, led him to do his best to take up a posting abroad. When dissatisfaction and disillusionment, with the Soviet Union, led to him being flagged as a ‘person of interest,’ it was not long before the British made a move to recruit him.
What follows is the fascinating tale of how the British managed to move their spy into better, and more useful, posts – even undertaking to do his daily work, when he was posted in London, so he could spend more time spying. However, when Gordievsky found himself recalled to Russia, and with a traitor about to reveal his identity, it was essential that the British rescue him – something that Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was keen that MI6 do their best to do, regardless of the danger.
Of course, being an escape plan hatched by the British, this is less about spy planes and more about Safeway carrier bags, Kit-Kats and a baby’s dirty nappy… This is full of tension, with a great understanding of the world of espionage, as you would expect from Ben Macintyre, including the rather competitive alliance between the British and the Americans and the real human cost of Gordievsky’s decision to lead a double life. This audio edition was delightfully told by Ben Macintyre and it was a joy to have the author read his own book. I have never read a book by Mr Macintyre that I have no loved and, I am glad to say, this was no exception.
,
We begin with the biography of Gordievsky, the son of a KGB officer, who grew up all too aware of how those around him often lived a double life and whose fascination with foreign countries, led him to do his best to take up a posting abroad. When dissatisfaction and disillusionment, with the Soviet Union, led to him being flagged as a ‘person of interest,’ it was not long before the British made a move to recruit him.
What follows is the fascinating tale of how the British managed to move their spy into better, and more useful, posts – even undertaking to do his daily work, when he was posted in London, so he could spend more time spying. However, when Gordievsky found himself recalled to Russia, and with a traitor about to reveal his identity, it was essential that the British rescue him – something that Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was keen that MI6 do their best to do, regardless of the danger.
Of course, being an escape plan hatched by the British, this is less about spy planes and more about Safeway carrier bags, Kit-Kats and a baby’s dirty nappy… This is full of tension, with a great understanding of the world of espionage, as you would expect from Ben Macintyre, including the rather competitive alliance between the British and the Americans and the real human cost of Gordievsky’s decision to lead a double life. This audio edition was delightfully told by Ben Macintyre and it was a joy to have the author read his own book. I have never read a book by Mr Macintyre that I have no loved and, I am glad to say, this was no exception.
,
November 22, 2020
Absolutely riveting!
September 21, 2018
With the current state of affairs between Russian and the UK, this story is more relevant than ever, and I suspect it will always be of interest to those who enjoy this genre. Ben MacIntyre is a fantastic writer and knows exactly how to grab the reader and hold them in place from first page to last. I found this as compelling and thrilling as any fiction book would be. Accurate and meticulously researched, this is a book not to be missed. I will be sure to look out for any future work the author decides to publish as it is evident he is a very gifted writer. I have no hesitation in highly recommending this book.
August 2, 2022
4.5 ☆
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War is an easy book to recommend. For those interested in Cold War history, this book presented it from the perspective of the intelligence community. For fans of espionage novels, here's a true-life account that delivered all the fear and nail-biting tension to rival any fictional thriller.
Author Ben Macintyre described a double agent - a KGB Colonel - who passed secrets and political insights to Britain's MI6 during the Cold War. Despite the fear of capture by his paranoid agency, Oleg Antonyevich Gordievsky became a traitor because he could no longer tolerate the ideology of the USSR and he wanted to actively subvert it.
This was my first book by Ben Macintyre, and it won't be my last. For the most part, the author seemed fairly objective as he described Gordievsky's life and the geopolitical events behind the Iron Curtain which shaped him. This book was a great blend of factual reporting and psychological and political insights into events of the mid to late 20th century. I had no idea that the world had truly been teetering on the precipice of nuclear warfare in the 1980s.
Although superfluous of melodramatic writing tricks to heighten the tension, there was palpable suspense in this narrative. The KGB was not a tolerant organization. Unlike western democracies, when a person was convicted of spying, the USSR believed in the death penalty. Gordievsky lived under the constant threat of exposure for his duplicity. In 1985, Gordievsky received an urgent summons to return to KGB headquarters. He was awaiting the formal announcement of his promotion and hoped the order was related to that. When Gordievsky arrived at his Moscow apartment, however, he realized that he had had intruders.
Paranoia is born of propaganda, ignorance, secrecy, and fear.
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War is an easy book to recommend. For those interested in Cold War history, this book presented it from the perspective of the intelligence community. For fans of espionage novels, here's a true-life account that delivered all the fear and nail-biting tension to rival any fictional thriller.
Why does anyone spy? Why, in particular, would someone join one intelligence service and then switch loyalty to an opposing one?
For many years, the KGB used the acronym MICE to identify the four mainspring of spying: Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego.
Author Ben Macintyre described a double agent - a KGB Colonel - who passed secrets and political insights to Britain's MI6 during the Cold War. Despite the fear of capture by his paranoid agency, Oleg Antonyevich Gordievsky became a traitor because he could no longer tolerate the ideology of the USSR and he wanted to actively subvert it.
"My new role gave a point to my existence." That role, [Gordievsky] believed, was nothing less than undermining the Soviet system, in a Manichaean struggle between good and evil that would eventually bring democracy to Russia and allow Russians to live freely, read what they wanted, and listen to Bach.
This was my first book by Ben Macintyre, and it won't be my last. For the most part, the author seemed fairly objective as he described Gordievsky's life and the geopolitical events behind the Iron Curtain which shaped him. This book was a great blend of factual reporting and psychological and political insights into events of the mid to late 20th century. I had no idea that the world had truly been teetering on the precipice of nuclear warfare in the 1980s.
Spies tend to make extravagant claims for their craft, but the reality of espionage is that it frequently makes little lasting difference.
Yet very occasionally spies have a profound impact on history. The pantheon of world-changing spies is small and select, and Oleg Gordievsky is in it.
Although superfluous of melodramatic writing tricks to heighten the tension, there was palpable suspense in this narrative. The KGB was not a tolerant organization. Unlike western democracies, when a person was convicted of spying, the USSR believed in the death penalty. Gordievsky lived under the constant threat of exposure for his duplicity. In 1985, Gordievsky received an urgent summons to return to KGB headquarters. He was awaiting the formal announcement of his promotion and hoped the order was related to that. When Gordievsky arrived at his Moscow apartment, however, he realized that he had had intruders.
The KGB was watching him. The spy was being spied upon by his fellow spies.
August 8, 2018
Macintyre's best yet! A truly staggering story told by a consummate storyteller. That being said, it's pretty clear that the book's sources are fairly biased towards Gordievsky, and while Macintyre does a good job noting where his sources are displaying overt nostalgia or actively misremembering motivations, there's not a strong voice to counteract the overall tone of the narrative SIS officers and agents are providing here. Still, that's not really why I read Ben Macintyre: I read him for the pulse-pounding "you are there" writing, the amazing stranger-than-fiction details, and the brave actions of individuals in shaping the course of history. On all of those metrics, this book delivers and delivers and delivers. There were two moments that literally had me holding me breath here. The courage and intelligence of those involved in this story are truly inspiring. Not to be missed.
May 10, 2019
Another fascinating spy story from Ben Macintyre! "The Spy and the Traitor" focuses on Oleg Gordievsky, who was a KGB agent but was also secretly spying for the British intelligence service in the 1970s and 80s.
I didn't know much about Gordievsky before starting this book, which made the true story seem all the more incredible. Previously I had read and enjoyed Macintyre's "A Spy Among Friends," which was about Kim Philby, a British agent who was secretly spying for the KGB.
If you are interested in Cold War history, this is a great read. Highly recommended.
Opening Passage of Chapter 1
"Oleg Gordievsky was born into the KGB: shaped by it, loved by it, twisted, damaged, and very nearly destroyed by it. The Soviet spy service was in his heart and in his blood. His father worked for the intelligence service all his life, and wore his KGB uniform every day, including weekends. The Gordievskys lived amid the spy fraternity in a designated apartment block, ate special food reserved for officers, and spent their free time socializing with other spy families. Gordievsky was a child of the KGB."
I didn't know much about Gordievsky before starting this book, which made the true story seem all the more incredible. Previously I had read and enjoyed Macintyre's "A Spy Among Friends," which was about Kim Philby, a British agent who was secretly spying for the KGB.
If you are interested in Cold War history, this is a great read. Highly recommended.
Opening Passage of Chapter 1
"Oleg Gordievsky was born into the KGB: shaped by it, loved by it, twisted, damaged, and very nearly destroyed by it. The Soviet spy service was in his heart and in his blood. His father worked for the intelligence service all his life, and wore his KGB uniform every day, including weekends. The Gordievskys lived amid the spy fraternity in a designated apartment block, ate special food reserved for officers, and spent their free time socializing with other spy families. Gordievsky was a child of the KGB."
January 23, 2021
This is this the second book by Ben Mcintyre I have listened to recently. The first one was Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy. Again, this book focuses on a real life spy story. In this case, the focus is a Soviet agent who becomes a double agent and provided secrets to the British government during the 1980s.. Macintyre traces the agent’s background, how he changed sides and how he was betrayed. I liked Agent Sonya a bit more — perhaps because she was a woman and such an unlikely spy — but I still thought this was well worth listening to. The history is really interesting and Macintyre does a great job of getting into everyone’s personal history and motives.
March 30, 2021
The true story of Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB agent for the USSR who turned spy and provided information to the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985. This book reads like a spy thriller and I had to keep reminding myself that the events described here actually happened. In fact some of the coincidences, mistakes and lucky turns of fate feel so unlikely that had it been a novel penned by John le Carré I’d have been crying foul, moaning about how contrived the story was. This truly is an amazing tale.
Gordievsky’s father was an officer with the NKVD, the agency responsible for the execution of untold numbers of citizens and the administrators of the Gulag system of forced labour camps. Oleg’s elder brother also became a Soviet agent so it was expected that he too would follow the same career path, which he duly did. But after spending time in Berlin in 1961 and later learning of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia he became disenchanted with the Soviet system. As a result, during a posting to Denmark he responded positively to an approach from Britain’s MI6 – he became, in essence, a double agent.
The Russian’s career continued to develop and in 1982 he was assigned to the Soviet embassy in London and became responsible for espionage and intelligence gathering in the UK. But just as his career seemed about to land the jackpot for MI6 Gordievsky was ordered to Moscow for a meeting. Could it be that he’d be rumbled or was this just a piece of bureaucracy to nail down his new position as station head? As the net potentially started to close a decision needed to be made: to stay in the UK and defect or gamble and return to meet his senior officers with the chance he might be arrested and ultimately tortured and executed.
The book is written in a well-constructed way, so that for people (like me) who are unfamiliar with Gordievsky’s story it really does become a cliff-hanger. The first two-thirds of the book is interesting enough but the final third really is edge of your seat stuff. What a brave man, what a story!
Gordievsky’s father was an officer with the NKVD, the agency responsible for the execution of untold numbers of citizens and the administrators of the Gulag system of forced labour camps. Oleg’s elder brother also became a Soviet agent so it was expected that he too would follow the same career path, which he duly did. But after spending time in Berlin in 1961 and later learning of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia he became disenchanted with the Soviet system. As a result, during a posting to Denmark he responded positively to an approach from Britain’s MI6 – he became, in essence, a double agent.
The Russian’s career continued to develop and in 1982 he was assigned to the Soviet embassy in London and became responsible for espionage and intelligence gathering in the UK. But just as his career seemed about to land the jackpot for MI6 Gordievsky was ordered to Moscow for a meeting. Could it be that he’d be rumbled or was this just a piece of bureaucracy to nail down his new position as station head? As the net potentially started to close a decision needed to be made: to stay in the UK and defect or gamble and return to meet his senior officers with the chance he might be arrested and ultimately tortured and executed.
The book is written in a well-constructed way, so that for people (like me) who are unfamiliar with Gordievsky’s story it really does become a cliff-hanger. The first two-thirds of the book is interesting enough but the final third really is edge of your seat stuff. What a brave man, what a story!
October 31, 2018
The Spy and the Traitor is the true tale of Oleg Gordievsky, a high-level KGB agent, who worked as a double agent for Great Britain and MI6. Gordievsky helped bring about the demise of the Soviet Union, and The Spy and the Traitor details his career and the story of how a CIA agent was almost his downfall. It is a fabulous, nail-biting read that flows like a fast-paced thriller especially as the author carefully unveils the details of Gordievsky’s exciting escape from Moscow in 1985. In an era where relations with Russia are sinking lower and lower, Macintyre’s tale hits close to home.
August 30, 2021
Amazing book, and even more amazing that it's a historical nonfiction and all TRUE! And I couldn't put it down it was so compelling and well written. I'm a huge fan of the spy genre in general, and I think this is one of the best I've read. You certainly get a very real sense of what it is like to be a spy and what Gordievsky's life must have been like.
April 8, 2023
I did look forward to reading this. By the time I was halfway through, I was becoming more and more disappointed with it.
It’s good versus bad, the perfectly pure, brave and honourable versus the dark, despicable and evil.
The man was a traitor, but that’s okay, because he spied on the evil for the honourable.
The author mentions another traitor in this; he gets one heck of a tongue lashing and so he should, he spied on the honourable for the evil.
There is something about this telling that doesn’t sit well with me. At points I did a little fact-checking (it’s all the rage nowadays) and Micheal Foot gets branded a KGB informer: he worked for the evil, not the honourable: dastardly fellow. Apparently there is no evidence to corroborate that fact: in fact, in 1995, Foot received an ‘out of court’ settlement, a hefty sum, from ‘The Sunday Times’ for daring to suggest he might have ever been such an evil doer.
My memory is not as good as I would like it to be and I’ve nowhere near the resources or even researchers to call upon that this author has at his fingertips. But I do believe I’m correct in saying that the suspicions hanging over Roger Hollis were not (I’ll have to read Chapman Pincher once more) that he was a KGB informer, it was in fact, that he was a GRU informer. And, I don’t know too much about the spy boys (the dark, despicable and evil) and their ways, but I doubt the the GRU are going to do swapsies with the KGB over a glass of vodka. If you did, you might just find your fingernails being pulled come the morning: bit risky, don’t ya’ think, playing ‘oneupmanship’ in that neck-of-the-woods.
Also, I get all twitchy when I’m told what so and so thought 25 years ago, why he thought it, what he said and why he said it.
I’m not at all impressed - I’m of the mind, the author has tried, and failed, to turn interesting history into a spy novel.
It’s good versus bad, the perfectly pure, brave and honourable versus the dark, despicable and evil.
The man was a traitor, but that’s okay, because he spied on the evil for the honourable.
The author mentions another traitor in this; he gets one heck of a tongue lashing and so he should, he spied on the honourable for the evil.
There is something about this telling that doesn’t sit well with me. At points I did a little fact-checking (it’s all the rage nowadays) and Micheal Foot gets branded a KGB informer: he worked for the evil, not the honourable: dastardly fellow. Apparently there is no evidence to corroborate that fact: in fact, in 1995, Foot received an ‘out of court’ settlement, a hefty sum, from ‘The Sunday Times’ for daring to suggest he might have ever been such an evil doer.
My memory is not as good as I would like it to be and I’ve nowhere near the resources or even researchers to call upon that this author has at his fingertips. But I do believe I’m correct in saying that the suspicions hanging over Roger Hollis were not (I’ll have to read Chapman Pincher once more) that he was a KGB informer, it was in fact, that he was a GRU informer. And, I don’t know too much about the spy boys (the dark, despicable and evil) and their ways, but I doubt the the GRU are going to do swapsies with the KGB over a glass of vodka. If you did, you might just find your fingernails being pulled come the morning: bit risky, don’t ya’ think, playing ‘oneupmanship’ in that neck-of-the-woods.
Also, I get all twitchy when I’m told what so and so thought 25 years ago, why he thought it, what he said and why he said it.
I’m not at all impressed - I’m of the mind, the author has tried, and failed, to turn interesting history into a spy novel.
May 21, 2019
Oleg Gordievsky is one of the most valuable spies ever recruited by a Western intelligence agency. He provided Britain’s MI6 with invaluable information for over ten years beginning in the mid 1970’s when the “Cold War” was being waged between the East and West. Because he was a colonel in the KGB, Gordievsky was privy to highly secret information which he then passed on to MI6. This information had repercussions which lasted well into the future, and was beneficial to numerous Western countries.
Unlike novels which portray the lives of spies as glamorous and action packed, Ben Macintyre’s account of the life of Oleg Gordievsky reveals the real day to day activities of a counterintelligence agent. It is full of suspicion, fear of discovery or betrayal, and enormous stress. It’s a fascinating view into the lives of counterintelligence agents. Gordievsky was betrayed by someone in the intelligence community, and his hair raising, almost miraculous, escape from Russia will keep you on the edge of your seat! It took years to discover his betrayer. Oleg Gordievsky was sentenced in absentia to death by the Russian courts. He remains on the “hit list” to this day.
Macintyre’s well written, well documented and researched book is a thrilling account of drama and intrigue. It is also a tribute to the man whose life was irrevocably changed because of his belief in the ideas of democracy. This is a book that’s well worth reading!
Unlike novels which portray the lives of spies as glamorous and action packed, Ben Macintyre’s account of the life of Oleg Gordievsky reveals the real day to day activities of a counterintelligence agent. It is full of suspicion, fear of discovery or betrayal, and enormous stress. It’s a fascinating view into the lives of counterintelligence agents. Gordievsky was betrayed by someone in the intelligence community, and his hair raising, almost miraculous, escape from Russia will keep you on the edge of your seat! It took years to discover his betrayer. Oleg Gordievsky was sentenced in absentia to death by the Russian courts. He remains on the “hit list” to this day.
Macintyre’s well written, well documented and researched book is a thrilling account of drama and intrigue. It is also a tribute to the man whose life was irrevocably changed because of his belief in the ideas of democracy. This is a book that’s well worth reading!
May 8, 2018
An exceptional read!
Everything you could want from a spy story: descriptions of trade craft, code names, depictions of all the facets of being a spy, from the humdrum review and contact of low level targets to moments of pants-distressing terror. And all the more captivating for it all being true!
The names have been changed, but the events spanning around two decades during the height of the Cold War are all very much non-fiction. Oleg Gordievsky, starting when merely a newly minted KGB man in Copenhagen, was approached by MI6 through Denmark's own security service. From there an astounding relationship blossoms, as Comrade Oleg rises to the rank of Colonel, and head of the KGB in London.
Read this book if you love spy stories; read this book if you love finding out about little-known facets of international relations and Cold War history; read this book if you've ever wondered about what kind of character, and will power could propel a person through two decades of lying to everyone around him, colleagues and loved ones included, in order to survive and do what he thought of as the only moral choice available to him.
Read. This. Book!
Everything you could want from a spy story: descriptions of trade craft, code names, depictions of all the facets of being a spy, from the humdrum review and contact of low level targets to moments of pants-distressing terror. And all the more captivating for it all being true!
The names have been changed, but the events spanning around two decades during the height of the Cold War are all very much non-fiction. Oleg Gordievsky, starting when merely a newly minted KGB man in Copenhagen, was approached by MI6 through Denmark's own security service. From there an astounding relationship blossoms, as Comrade Oleg rises to the rank of Colonel, and head of the KGB in London.
Read this book if you love spy stories; read this book if you love finding out about little-known facets of international relations and Cold War history; read this book if you've ever wondered about what kind of character, and will power could propel a person through two decades of lying to everyone around him, colleagues and loved ones included, in order to survive and do what he thought of as the only moral choice available to him.
Read. This. Book!
May 13, 2022
Karo skaitinys, toks kaip būna true-crime, tai čia true-thriller. Apie buvusį KGB šnipą, kuris iš idėjinių paskatų (nekentė sovietų, norėjo demokratijos) pradėjo šnipinėti Britanijai, paskui, kai jau buvo išaiškintas, vos išsikapstė iš SSRS - tam buvo vykdoma didžiulė operacija. Dėl išdavystės jam taip ir neatleido žmona, dabar jis gyvena Londone su netikra pavarde ir vienas (sad). Dėl jo perduodamos info tipo Thatcher ir Gorbačiovui buvo lengviau megzti santykius, ir šiaip pasaulyje nekilo atominis.
Kadangi mano žinios apie šnipus visiškai menkos (be "Ieškokit Gudručio"), buvo daug naujo - kaip dirba tarnybos, kaip konkuruoja tarpusavyje, ką veikia. Labai juokiausi, kaip vienas agentas Danijoj trolindavo KGBistus - pvz, nuseka vieną iki supermarketo, tada per garsiakalbį kviečia: prašom KGB darbuotoją tokį ir tokį prieiti prie informacijos punkto. Dar labai įspūdingos visos slaptų ženklų sistemos, pvz:
Nuimtos žvaigždutės - už liaupses Gordijevskiui, kad tas vis dėlto rinkosi Tiesą, Gerąsias Vertybes, ir už tai, kad tas net per extra pavojingą jo gelbėjimo iš SSRS planą, kuris buvo sukurtas ir repetuojamas keliolika metų, vis tiek vos visko nesušiko, kai laukdamas gelbėtojų sutartoj vietoj miške išėjo į kaimyninį miestelį dasimušt. Wtf, gal jis ir rusas, bet čia ne Šuriko nuotykiai, aš tai būčiau pasiutus tų gelbėtojų vietoj.
Kadangi mano žinios apie šnipus visiškai menkos (be "Ieškokit Gudručio"), buvo daug naujo - kaip dirba tarnybos, kaip konkuruoja tarpusavyje, ką veikia. Labai juokiausi, kaip vienas agentas Danijoj trolindavo KGBistus - pvz, nuseka vieną iki supermarketo, tada per garsiakalbį kviečia: prašom KGB darbuotoją tokį ir tokį prieiti prie informacijos punkto. Dar labai įspūdingos visos slaptų ženklų sistemos, pvz:
Gukas turi palikti ženklą, kad nori bendradarbiauti, Pikadilio metro stotyje, įspausdamas plokščiagalvį smeigtuką ant laiptų, vedančių nuo trečios ir ketvirtos Pikadilio linijos platformų, dešinio turėklo viršaus. Koba patvirtins, kad gavo signalą, užvyniodamas gabaliuką mėlynos lipnios juostelės ant telefono ragelio laidos vidurinėje iš penkių vienoje eilėje stovinčių būdelių Adam & Eve Court gatvėje, visai šalia Oksfordo gatvės. (p. 161)Nu ir turbūt labiausiai juokiausi, kai tas svarbiausias šnipas Gordijevskis bandė verbuoti vieną parlamentarą, bet nesuprato nė žodžio iš to škotiško akcento :D
Nuimtos žvaigždutės - už liaupses Gordijevskiui, kad tas vis dėlto rinkosi Tiesą, Gerąsias Vertybes, ir už tai, kad tas net per extra pavojingą jo gelbėjimo iš SSRS planą, kuris buvo sukurtas ir repetuojamas keliolika metų, vis tiek vos visko nesušiko, kai laukdamas gelbėtojų sutartoj vietoj miške išėjo į kaimyninį miestelį dasimušt. Wtf, gal jis ir rusas, bet čia ne Šuriko nuotykiai, aš tai būčiau pasiutus tų gelbėtojų vietoj.
April 13, 2021
A must-read for fans of The Americans and Homeland, The Spy and the Traitor tells the remarkable story of a KGB agent working for MI6 who helped end the Cold War. The details regarding the inner workings of intelligence agencies is fascinating. However, Macintrye's narration is, at times, as melodramatic as a prime-time investigative news show.
November 20, 2023
Post-Philby Cold War true story well told.
December 11, 2020
I wish I could bottle the feeling of exhilaration I had while reading this atmospheric, tense, unbelievable but true spy thriller. It's the kind of story John le Carré wrote, the kind of geopolitical map that still animates strategy games decades after the end of the Cold War, and the kind of slow burn that every TV showrunner is trying to conjure up. I don't want to spoil it by summarizing, but as for why it's not a bestseller, I can only hypothesize that it is a fairly long book that requires a decent knowledge of history. If this is the kind of book you read, you should read this one.
2020 reread: I'm glad I read this again, even though it hasn't been that long since my first go, because while it is tense and exciting as I originally said, especially , it also has a very warm side that I recognized more now. Macintyre writes early on about how spying starts as a sort of romance between the prospective agent and the soliciting handler. This is a story of profound devotion--not between two romantic partners, but between a spy and his chosen country. He takes a huge leap and trusts that they'll catch him. While Cold War espionage always has the threat of violence in the frame, at the heart of this thrilling nonfictional thriller, there is something wistful and sweet.
2020 reread: I'm glad I read this again, even though it hasn't been that long since my first go, because while it is tense and exciting as I originally said, especially , it also has a very warm side that I recognized more now. Macintyre writes early on about how spying starts as a sort of romance between the prospective agent and the soliciting handler. This is a story of profound devotion--not between two romantic partners, but between a spy and his chosen country. He takes a huge leap and trusts that they'll catch him. While Cold War espionage always has the threat of violence in the frame, at the heart of this thrilling nonfictional thriller, there is something wistful and sweet.
July 5, 2019
Excellent account on life of Oleg Gordievsky (if you want to check for his autobiography - check Next Stop Execution: The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky). Ben Macintyre knows how to write about spies - what make them moving and doing stuff they did. Another great books just finished recently is A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal. Both are highly recommended.
February 28, 2020
Another excellent spy story by Macintyre. This one was harder to get into for me than his others- so many Russian names, places, organizational schools or government entities. But it's still an enthralling review of this man's family, life, associations etc. It is SO telling that he (and his mother in a former era) had huge misgivings about Russian authoritarian systems and found that they could never express them openly. Or only in rare tangents to those who they loved, most trusted etc. And that's just NOT or ever more than a person or two in decades of smiling affirmations. Wise counsel his mother gave him with her example.
All the missing people and stunted and destroyed lives in Communism and Socialist dictates of actions. How do they NOT or become NOTICED by the comrades? Or now in reflections of desire for copy either?
This is the reality of the Cold War as I remember it all too. Non-fiction at its best.
All the missing people and stunted and destroyed lives in Communism and Socialist dictates of actions. How do they NOT or become NOTICED by the comrades? Or now in reflections of desire for copy either?
This is the reality of the Cold War as I remember it all too. Non-fiction at its best.
May 29, 2022
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War (2018) by Ben Macintyre is an astonishing story about a Cold War superspy.
Oleg Gordievsky was recruited by MI6 whilst working for the KGB and was Britain’s most important foreign agent during the 1970s and 1980s. His intelligence was extremely helpful to Britain and her allies during the Cold War era. Inevitably his luck ran out and the KGB became almost certain he was a spy. Oleg Gordievsky's recall to Moscow in 1985, and subsequent rescue, makes up the final third of this account and it's a gripping read. The actual escape has to be read to be believed.
As usual the excellent Ben Macintyre has uncovered an extraordinary story and, it’s fair to say, that without Oleg’s intelligence the Cold War could all too easily have tipped over into nuclear war.
We also learn of the political figures from the 1970s and 1980s who were compromised by the Soviets, for example Trade Union leader Jack Jones and Labour leader Michael Foot. All manner of interesting names are brought to life in this account of Oleg Gordievsky's career, not least CIA operative Aldrich Ames, who alerted the KGB about his treachery.
4/5
More information...
On a warm July evening in 1985, a middle-aged man stood on the pavement of a busy avenue in the heart of Moscow, holding a plastic carrier bag. In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket.
The man was a spy for MI6. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia.
So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever.
Some reviews...
The best true spy story I have ever read -- John le Carré
Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else. He has a remarkable ability to construct a narrative that is as taut and urgent as it is carefully nuanced. Here the pace never slackens and the focus never drifts, while Macintyre's insight into his subject's tangle of contradictions never loses its sharpness. It's a tough call, but The Spy and the Traitor may well be his best book yet. -- John Preston ― Evening Standard
A real-life thriller, as tense as John le Carré's novels, or even Ian Fleming's ― Economist
A dazzling non-fiction thriller and an intimate portrait of high-stakes espionage -- Luke Harding ― Guardian
[A] captivating espionage tale. In a feat of real authorial dexterity, Macintyre accurately portrays the long-game banality of spycraft-the lead time and persistence in planning-with such clarity and propulsive verve that the book often feels like a thriller. Macintyre has produceda timely and insightful page-turner. ― Publishers Weekly
It has become a cliché to say that real-life spy stories read like John le Carré, but Gordievsky's personal history makes the comparison irresistible... Macintyre tells the story brilliantly. His book's final third is superbly done -- Dominic Sandbrook, Book of the Week ― Sunday Times
The fact that parts of The Spy and the Traitor read like a pacey thriller is a bonus, but it is based on serious research, including interviews with Gordievsky and anonymous British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officers... This is a remarkable story of one man's courage, and of the skill of our much traduced security services. Ben Macintyre tells it very well indeed ― The Times, Book of the Week
You can always rely on this author to tease out fascinating details on the second oldest profession ― Sunday Express
Writing about cases of British espionage success that the public knows little about, he says - 'It takes an investigator of consummate talent and a narrator of equal skill to unearth one of these triumphs and explain it clearly. Ben Macintyre, who is both, has done exactly that. -- Frederick Forsyth ― Literary Review
Macintyre's account brings it 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 ― Spectator
[An] exceptionally rewarding book ― Observer
He writes like a novelist, introducing richly drawn characters whose lives intersect with Gordievsky's. One of the last chapters is as tense as any thriller. No wonder Le Carré liked it ― Daily Express
Thrilling... A real heart-in-the-mouth book ― New Statesman
Reads like a thriller. . . truly nerve-jangling ― The Times Books of the Year
One of the most exciting things I have ever read -- George Osborne ― Evening Standard, Books of the Year
An impeccably researched, compelling read ― Independent
Oleg Gordievsky was recruited by MI6 whilst working for the KGB and was Britain’s most important foreign agent during the 1970s and 1980s. His intelligence was extremely helpful to Britain and her allies during the Cold War era. Inevitably his luck ran out and the KGB became almost certain he was a spy. Oleg Gordievsky's recall to Moscow in 1985, and subsequent rescue, makes up the final third of this account and it's a gripping read. The actual escape has to be read to be believed.
As usual the excellent Ben Macintyre has uncovered an extraordinary story and, it’s fair to say, that without Oleg’s intelligence the Cold War could all too easily have tipped over into nuclear war.
We also learn of the political figures from the 1970s and 1980s who were compromised by the Soviets, for example Trade Union leader Jack Jones and Labour leader Michael Foot. All manner of interesting names are brought to life in this account of Oleg Gordievsky's career, not least CIA operative Aldrich Ames, who alerted the KGB about his treachery.
4/5
More information...
On a warm July evening in 1985, a middle-aged man stood on the pavement of a busy avenue in the heart of Moscow, holding a plastic carrier bag. In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket.
The man was a spy for MI6. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia.
So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever.
Some reviews...
The best true spy story I have ever read -- John le Carré
Macintyre does true-life espionage better than anyone else. He has a remarkable ability to construct a narrative that is as taut and urgent as it is carefully nuanced. Here the pace never slackens and the focus never drifts, while Macintyre's insight into his subject's tangle of contradictions never loses its sharpness. It's a tough call, but The Spy and the Traitor may well be his best book yet. -- John Preston ― Evening Standard
A real-life thriller, as tense as John le Carré's novels, or even Ian Fleming's ― Economist
A dazzling non-fiction thriller and an intimate portrait of high-stakes espionage -- Luke Harding ― Guardian
[A] captivating espionage tale. In a feat of real authorial dexterity, Macintyre accurately portrays the long-game banality of spycraft-the lead time and persistence in planning-with such clarity and propulsive verve that the book often feels like a thriller. Macintyre has produceda timely and insightful page-turner. ― Publishers Weekly
It has become a cliché to say that real-life spy stories read like John le Carré, but Gordievsky's personal history makes the comparison irresistible... Macintyre tells the story brilliantly. His book's final third is superbly done -- Dominic Sandbrook, Book of the Week ― Sunday Times
The fact that parts of The Spy and the Traitor read like a pacey thriller is a bonus, but it is based on serious research, including interviews with Gordievsky and anonymous British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officers... This is a remarkable story of one man's courage, and of the skill of our much traduced security services. Ben Macintyre tells it very well indeed ― The Times, Book of the Week
You can always rely on this author to tease out fascinating details on the second oldest profession ― Sunday Express
Writing about cases of British espionage success that the public knows little about, he says - 'It takes an investigator of consummate talent and a narrator of equal skill to unearth one of these triumphs and explain it clearly. Ben Macintyre, who is both, has done exactly that. -- Frederick Forsyth ― Literary Review
Macintyre's account brings it 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 ― Spectator
[An] exceptionally rewarding book ― Observer
He writes like a novelist, introducing richly drawn characters whose lives intersect with Gordievsky's. One of the last chapters is as tense as any thriller. No wonder Le Carré liked it ― Daily Express
Thrilling... A real heart-in-the-mouth book ― New Statesman
Reads like a thriller. . . truly nerve-jangling ― The Times Books of the Year
One of the most exciting things I have ever read -- George Osborne ― Evening Standard, Books of the Year
An impeccably researched, compelling read ― Independent
November 23, 2023
Ha kémek, akkor Macintyre. Szerintem ez a fickó többet tud róluk, mint amennyit ők magukról. És - pluszpontért - még marha gördülékeny, élvezetes prózát is tud belőlük rittyenteni. Mondjuk tegyük hozzá, élvezetes prózát rittyenteni ebben az esetben nem is olyan nehéz, tekintve, micsoda kalandos az élet hírszerzőéknél - de Macintyre még arra is képes, hogy világos szöveggé rendezze azt a kaotikus titkos háborút, amit az olyan behemótok vívnak egymással, mint a KGB meg az MI6. És ez nem kis bravúr.
Különben meg az embernek ezeket a köteteket olvasva gyakran támad az a benyomása, hogy bármilyen izgalmasak is ezek a szkanderozások, azért a kémek testületeinek egymással birkózása végtére is nem sokban változtatott a világ folyásán. Mert mit csinál a kém? A nap nagy részében más kémeket vegzál. Ez el is veszi az összes idejét. Néha aztán szerez valami hasznos információt mondjuk az ellenség lehetséges stratégiájáról, de azt meg ugye a munkaadói vagy elhiszik, vagy nem. A megszerzett információk jelentős része ugyanis csali, porhintés, amit a rivális hírszerző egység akar megetetni velünk. Plusz szomorú tény, hogy a kémek zöme vagy kóros hazudozó, vagy kapzsi gazember, vagy egoista puhatestű, esetleg mind egyszerre, következésképp az higgyen nekik, akinek két anyja van. Ritka az olyan egyéniség, aki nem nettó pöcs, ráadásul még mérhető befolyással is van a történelem menetére. És Macintyre úgy hiszi, talált egyet.
A hetvenes évek végén járunk - ez a Szovjetunióban a gerontokraták aranykora, Brezsnyev fingszagú regnálása. Ebben a közegben lép a KGB kötelékébe bizonyos Oleg Gorgyijevszkij, akit mintha az Isten (vagy ki van a marxistáknál) is hírszerzőnek teremtett volna. Hisz apu is az volt, és ha apu is az volt, akkor a két fia miért ne legyen az? Csakhogy Oleg kezd besokallni a rendszer áporodott miazmáitól, amin nem segít az sem, hogy koppenhágai kiküldetése alatt belekóstol a nyugati szabadságba. Más kommunista az ilyesmit masszív alkoholizmussal kezeli - Oleg bátyját is a mája vitte el 39 évesen -, Oleg viszont nem ilyen. Ő úgy dönt, tesz azért, hogy a kommunizmus vereséget szenvedjen - úgyhogy beszervezteti magát a brit hírszerzéssel.
No most döntése úgy éri az MI6-t, mintha előrehozták volna a karácsonyt. Tudni kell, hogy ebben az időben a brit hírszerzés a padlón volt - még nyögték a Philby-féle gigantikus szégyent, amikor a KGB-nek a legmagasabb szinten sikerült beépülniük közéjük. Erre jön egy szovjet tiszt, aki önként felajánlja nekik a szolgálatait. Ráadásul nem pénzért vagy sértettségből - hanem színtiszta idealizmusból. Ezzel pedig elkezdődik az a gyümölcsöző munkakapcsolat, sőt: gyönyörű barátság, ami aztán a KGB tán legnagyobb hírszerzési fiaskójában csúcsosodik ki.
Tényleg olyan sztori ez, ami könyörög, hogy filmre vigyék. Macintyre még arra is ügyel, hogy kontrapontozza az eseményeket - a protagonista Gorgyijevszkij mellett bemutatja annak nemezisét, az antagonista Aldrich Amest, aki olyan, mintha Oleg torz tükörképe lenne. Ő a CIA tisztjeként döntött úgy, hogy a KGB-nek árusítja ki az információkat, köztük Gorgyijevszkij személyazonosságát. Mégpedig azért, mert nagyobb kocsira vágyott. Ha rajta múlott volna, Oleg kínok között pusztul el egy alagsori cellában - ám mindannyiunk szerencséjére hátra van a dramaturgiai csúcspont: az MI6 ugyanis képes Moszkvából, az oroszok orra elől kilopni lelepleződött ügynökét. Hát mi szép, ha nem ez?
Ajánlom mindenkinek. Ilyenek az igazi James Bondok, na.
Különben meg az embernek ezeket a köteteket olvasva gyakran támad az a benyomása, hogy bármilyen izgalmasak is ezek a szkanderozások, azért a kémek testületeinek egymással birkózása végtére is nem sokban változtatott a világ folyásán. Mert mit csinál a kém? A nap nagy részében más kémeket vegzál. Ez el is veszi az összes idejét. Néha aztán szerez valami hasznos információt mondjuk az ellenség lehetséges stratégiájáról, de azt meg ugye a munkaadói vagy elhiszik, vagy nem. A megszerzett információk jelentős része ugyanis csali, porhintés, amit a rivális hírszerző egység akar megetetni velünk. Plusz szomorú tény, hogy a kémek zöme vagy kóros hazudozó, vagy kapzsi gazember, vagy egoista puhatestű, esetleg mind egyszerre, következésképp az higgyen nekik, akinek két anyja van. Ritka az olyan egyéniség, aki nem nettó pöcs, ráadásul még mérhető befolyással is van a történelem menetére. És Macintyre úgy hiszi, talált egyet.
A hetvenes évek végén járunk - ez a Szovjetunióban a gerontokraták aranykora, Brezsnyev fingszagú regnálása. Ebben a közegben lép a KGB kötelékébe bizonyos Oleg Gorgyijevszkij, akit mintha az Isten (vagy ki van a marxistáknál) is hírszerzőnek teremtett volna. Hisz apu is az volt, és ha apu is az volt, akkor a két fia miért ne legyen az? Csakhogy Oleg kezd besokallni a rendszer áporodott miazmáitól, amin nem segít az sem, hogy koppenhágai kiküldetése alatt belekóstol a nyugati szabadságba. Más kommunista az ilyesmit masszív alkoholizmussal kezeli - Oleg bátyját is a mája vitte el 39 évesen -, Oleg viszont nem ilyen. Ő úgy dönt, tesz azért, hogy a kommunizmus vereséget szenvedjen - úgyhogy beszervezteti magát a brit hírszerzéssel.
No most döntése úgy éri az MI6-t, mintha előrehozták volna a karácsonyt. Tudni kell, hogy ebben az időben a brit hírszerzés a padlón volt - még nyögték a Philby-féle gigantikus szégyent, amikor a KGB-nek a legmagasabb szinten sikerült beépülniük közéjük. Erre jön egy szovjet tiszt, aki önként felajánlja nekik a szolgálatait. Ráadásul nem pénzért vagy sértettségből - hanem színtiszta idealizmusból. Ezzel pedig elkezdődik az a gyümölcsöző munkakapcsolat, sőt: gyönyörű barátság, ami aztán a KGB tán legnagyobb hírszerzési fiaskójában csúcsosodik ki.
Tényleg olyan sztori ez, ami könyörög, hogy filmre vigyék. Macintyre még arra is ügyel, hogy kontrapontozza az eseményeket - a protagonista Gorgyijevszkij mellett bemutatja annak nemezisét, az antagonista Aldrich Amest, aki olyan, mintha Oleg torz tükörképe lenne. Ő a CIA tisztjeként döntött úgy, hogy a KGB-nek árusítja ki az információkat, köztük Gorgyijevszkij személyazonosságát. Mégpedig azért, mert nagyobb kocsira vágyott. Ha rajta múlott volna, Oleg kínok között pusztul el egy alagsori cellában - ám mindannyiunk szerencséjére hátra van a dramaturgiai csúcspont: az MI6 ugyanis képes Moszkvából, az oroszok orra elől kilopni lelepleződött ügynökét. Hát mi szép, ha nem ez?
Ajánlom mindenkinek. Ilyenek az igazi James Bondok, na.
September 29, 2018
Ben Macintyre is in the top ten of my all time favourite authors...although possibly that should say 'favourite reporters'. Because report is what he does...and he does it really well. Taking both well known and 'new to me' episodes and events of the past 100 years and retelling/reporting them in riveting style. Crimes, wars, politics, people, espionage- I just checked out his list of titles and I would or have, given all of them well deserved five star reviews. All well deserved for their meticulous attention to detail, and that detail, reported in really 'can't put it down style' but without the brash repetitive nonsense of today's modern TV documentaries, where the 'backstory/reasons we are here' get repeated each ten minutes- just in case we do have the attention span of the gnats the producers have assumed to their viewers. As it happens I didn't like this book- because it presented nothing new about what is, as it claims, reasonably justifiably 'The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War.' The story has been well told before - in great detail- particularly well by Gordon Corera. So for me Bens latest work is a real disappointment - the first in his folio-but it's more my fault, than his...as I have read so much on this matter already, researching other aspects of the event as an author myself. Hence me giving, a well deserved five star review to a book that disappointed...I really do recommend it and would urge you to also check out his other work...I eagerly await his next offering. I read the kindle version. The hard back cover design shown here is appalling...and is I suspect of the US edition...the European one (or possibly the softback) is way better. The publishers should be ashamed-I assume nepotism, or an amateur playing at the design game-and their meddling will cost him sales.
April 20, 2021
What is happening to me with my recent love of dad nonfiction? Between this and Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt for Putin's Spies last year I now actually enjoy spy stories? Life will surprise you like that sometimes.
Anyway I didn’t love this one as unconditionally as I loved that book, but I see why Ben MacIntyre is so popular. The escape part of this was pretty tense, although reading it while on the subway probably heightened the anxiety somewhat. Even though we know he’s still alive! It was THAT intense.
Really fascinating story, so well told, his characterizations of people were both vivid and often hilarious, and he set up the Cold War context around these events perfectly. I don’t know what Aldrich Ames sounds like but I always imagine the voice of Templeton the rat. Gordievsky is truly a hero and the last page almost made me cry. If I lived in England I would leave baked goods outside the door of his electronic tripwire-guarded house.
Anyway I didn’t love this one as unconditionally as I loved that book, but I see why Ben MacIntyre is so popular. The escape part of this was pretty tense, although reading it while on the subway probably heightened the anxiety somewhat. Even though we know he’s still alive! It was THAT intense.
Really fascinating story, so well told, his characterizations of people were both vivid and often hilarious, and he set up the Cold War context around these events perfectly. I don’t know what Aldrich Ames sounds like but I always imagine the voice of Templeton the rat. Gordievsky is truly a hero and the last page almost made me cry. If I lived in England I would leave baked goods outside the door of his electronic tripwire-guarded house.
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August 19, 2021When you stay up all night finishing a book you know it's good. I couldn't put it down.
April 20, 2018
Ben Macintyre is John le Carré's literary heir. But his stories are real. His newest, and best, book perfectly captures the tedium of most spy work alleviated only the the heart-thumping terror of when things go wrong. And spies being human, things always go wrong in the most mundane of ways.
March 23, 2019
A man dressed in a drab grey suit standing in a street corner in the middle of Moscow looking like the other citizens passing him by would have been almost unnoticeable, but because he was holding a plastic bag from the British supermarket, Safeway, for the people looking out for him he stood out like a beacon. He was not a regular Soviet citizen, he was a senior KGB officer and he had just activated his escape plan. He now had to hope that his signal had been noticed by those who needed to see it and not by those that were hunting for him.
In the world of smoke and mirrors that constitutes the fragmented world of the intelligence agencies, the truth is often stranger than fiction and often way beyond that. No one would have thought that pillars of the establishment would have spied for the Russians, but when Philby and his cohorts defected it was realised that your background was not a passport to trust. The same logic could have been applied to Oleg Gordievsky. His father and brother were KGB officers and staunch supporters of the regime but he carried a secret that not even his KGB wife knew. For the past eleven years, he had been a spy for MI6.
In this book, Macintyre takes us right through Gordievsky's life, from his earliest days in the KGB, his realisation that the regime that he worked for did not suit his growing liberal outlook the horror he experience when he was there when the Berlin Wall went up. He has his first contact with MI6 in the early 1970s when he was based in Denmark. For MI6 it seemed too good to be true and they took a while to realise that he was not going to be a double agent, but he was for real and had a genuine and personal reason for passing on the information that he did. As he rose in the rank he managed to get a posting to the UK, ideal for MI6 as they could meet him under much more relaxed circumstances. That was until he was recalled to Moscow suddenly, he knew he had been betrayed, but he didn't know just by who or how much.
MI6 knew that things were not right and set about implementing the escape plan that they had codenamed Pimlico to snatch Gordievsky right from under the noses of the KGB and spirit him across the border to freedom.
The book is pieced together from a series of interviews that Macintyre has completed with the people involved in his unique case. The actual files concerning Gordievsky are still secret and I guess that they will remain that way for a long time. It reads like an actual spy thriller most of the time, including a stunning ending as they try to get him out of the Soviet Union. Gordievsky is still alive and well and living under an assumed name somewhere in the home counties. Given the reach of the FSB, his home is under 24-hour surveillance. One countries spy is another countries traitor, but from the accounts in here, it could be said that he helped stop nuclear war and bring about the demise of the totalitarian state. Another stunning book from Macintyre. 4.5 stars
In the world of smoke and mirrors that constitutes the fragmented world of the intelligence agencies, the truth is often stranger than fiction and often way beyond that. No one would have thought that pillars of the establishment would have spied for the Russians, but when Philby and his cohorts defected it was realised that your background was not a passport to trust. The same logic could have been applied to Oleg Gordievsky. His father and brother were KGB officers and staunch supporters of the regime but he carried a secret that not even his KGB wife knew. For the past eleven years, he had been a spy for MI6.
In this book, Macintyre takes us right through Gordievsky's life, from his earliest days in the KGB, his realisation that the regime that he worked for did not suit his growing liberal outlook the horror he experience when he was there when the Berlin Wall went up. He has his first contact with MI6 in the early 1970s when he was based in Denmark. For MI6 it seemed too good to be true and they took a while to realise that he was not going to be a double agent, but he was for real and had a genuine and personal reason for passing on the information that he did. As he rose in the rank he managed to get a posting to the UK, ideal for MI6 as they could meet him under much more relaxed circumstances. That was until he was recalled to Moscow suddenly, he knew he had been betrayed, but he didn't know just by who or how much.
MI6 knew that things were not right and set about implementing the escape plan that they had codenamed Pimlico to snatch Gordievsky right from under the noses of the KGB and spirit him across the border to freedom.
The book is pieced together from a series of interviews that Macintyre has completed with the people involved in his unique case. The actual files concerning Gordievsky are still secret and I guess that they will remain that way for a long time. It reads like an actual spy thriller most of the time, including a stunning ending as they try to get him out of the Soviet Union. Gordievsky is still alive and well and living under an assumed name somewhere in the home counties. Given the reach of the FSB, his home is under 24-hour surveillance. One countries spy is another countries traitor, but from the accounts in here, it could be said that he helped stop nuclear war and bring about the demise of the totalitarian state. Another stunning book from Macintyre. 4.5 stars
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