The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

The story of Oleg Gordievsky is nearly too real to be believable. He was a KGB agent who decided he would share secrets with Britain. He provided an abundant source of information. However, the west was not able to fully disseminate or act on it for fear of implicating the source. Even the US CIA did not know who the source was (and did some undercover work themselves to try to find out.) When he was posted in London, the UK did some work to help him maintain his position and rise in the ranks. He was able to provide just enough apparently useful intelligence to the Soviet Union to maintain his value.

From his information, Britain was able to learn many of the challenges within the Soviet Union. Even the KGB was mired in its own bureaucracy. The Soviets had also come to the belief that the US was at the cusp of launching a nuclear attack. They would find all sorts of other meaningless actions that seemed to "back up" their supposition. Once Gordievsky was out of the KGB, the west was able to fully act on much of the intelligence provided. This was in the mid-80s, a half decade before the collapse of communism.

His escape from Russia was perhaps the most "unreal" part of the story. The KGB-brass had an inkling that he may be a spy and called him back to Russia. He managed to make it through the truth-serum interrogation, but knew he was likely a dead man. Through coded phone messages, an elaborate escape plan was set in motion that involved signaling using a safeway bag and mars bar. Then the getaway required breaking a multi-vehicle tail, hiding him with heat-resistant blankets in the back of a car, a baby's dirty diaper and making it through multiple checkpoints to get to Finland, then to Norway and finally to England. A young Putin was involved on the Russian side. The book credits Russian bureaucratic complacency as one factor that helped the plot to succeed.

Alas, his wife and kids were still in Russia. They were interrogated by the KGB and had a miserable life for a few years. However, after the fall of communism in the early 90s, they were able to be reunited again. Alas, by this time they had drifted apart. (They had known nothing of his spying or the escape plot and had remained loyal to the USSR.)