The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre

Author : Ben Macintyre
Title : The Spy and the Traitor
Published : 2018
Publisher : Viking
Pages : 384
Genre : Biography / Spy

   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 espionage.

   When it comes to the tales of spies we tend to assume that it's either all James Bond or that the reality is probably a lot more boring than any of us would give it credit for. But in the case of The Spy and the Traitor could it shed some light on what it was really like to play spy games I the height of the cold war. I would start by saying I have the greatest of respect for what these brave men and women do. It is by no means an easy feat to go into the lion's den day after day knowing that each might just be your last. It is all too easy to assume that there was this big game of cat and mouse going on for decades between the great superpowers of the time. It is in reading this that I started to realize that there might just be some truth to all this. 

   In the case of Oleg Gordievsky, he was a man in love with the whole mythos of the great game. Whilst doing what he could to serve his motherland, he also fell for everything British. It was a hard pull for a man who believed in what he had been told. That everything was fine and dandy with his country and that they were a shining beacon of all that was good in the world. It seems weird to me that people fall for this strange version of the country that I call home. It is this strange and twisted version that for me only really exits in books and films. But for him it was everything. So when the thought of becoming a double agent started to work it's magic it would seem that it was for the genuine love of a country he had never really known. It is strange to see a man who chooses his path for a deep belief in what he thinks is right. A thing that seems so devoid in the modern world.

   I wasn't really sure what to expect going into this book, I knew that it was a bestseller that came out. So I figured it must be a gripping story. It felt to me like it had a much wider audience than the usual books in its genre. The tale that Macintyre delvers are everything you would come to want for a spy tale. To say that it is up there with most of the fictional tales would be to do it an injustice. If you were not living it, I feel it would be every child's fantasy of what it meant to be a spy. With both sides trying to protect their countries own secrets. For England, there was no big coup than t have a double agent in the heart of the KGB. It gave them one upon the apposition. The problem was that The Russian were trying to do exactly the same to them. What this leads to is a heart-stopping tale of both sides not only trying to flip the opposition but also trying to find those who have turned in their own ranks. 

   Not only is this book a tale of a spy trying to do what he believes is right deep down in his soul. But also an eye-opening tale of just how close we came in the eighties to all-out war. If things had turned the other way none of would have been here now and the world might just have been a nuclear wasteland. It seems like a statement that is completely overplayed, and a series of events that all sides have spent a long time playing down. This book was not only everything I had hoped it would be but gave me a look into a world that has changed so much since these people risked there lives for the greater good. Whilst I still suspect that these old "Enemies" still play games with each other as the events in Salisbury recently show. The enemy is not so obvious anymore. This is a book that not only gives a tale of twists and turns but gives you some laughs at the most stupid of situations. I suppose that no matter the job people are still people and its whatever gets you to where you want to be.