Too many “bests” about a book make me a little suspicious about a promotion campaign, and there are plenty of people who have described The Spy and the Traitor with that adjective. However, when my oldest son, who loves spy novels, applied the word to this narrative nonfiction by Ben Macintyre, I had to check it out. In my opinion, narrative nonfiction may be the hardest kind of book to write since it must all be verifiable truth yet must read like a novel. When done well, as this is, it may also be the most enjoyable to read. If you have ever wondered how a double spy kept his stories straight and kept things from those who knew him best, this book will give you that picture. The premise of the book lies in a quote, “If the enemy has spies in your camp, and you have spies in his, the world may be a little safer, but essentially you wind up where you started, somewhere on the arcane and unquantifiable spectrum of ‘I know that you know that I know . . . ’”
Oleg Gordievsky took his first posting from Russian intelligence in 1968 and worked his way up to be the Soviet’s top man in London. In 1973, he began working secretly with the British. Early on, they devised a daring escape plan that both the British and Gordievsky hoped would never have to be used. He went through a divorce from his first wife before having a wonderful family life with his second wife and two daughters in Britain, supposedly working for the Soviets. Neither wife knew of his double life. His second wife, whom he loved dearly, worked for the Soviets herself, completely unaware of his deception.
Interesting tidbits popped up throughout the book starting with the dentist who drilled unnecessary holes in one agent’s teeth as an easy confirmation for his identity. Messages might be passed by random blue marks in specified places and wads of chewing gum. KGB paranoia included keeping watch over slaughterhouses under the theory that an uptick might mean America was stockpiling hamburgers prior to Armageddon.
In the world of agents and counter agents and threatened war, the Soviet Union was the enemy against Britain and the United States with those two countries as both friends and rivals. Gordievsky kept his cover for a decade. Treachery in the form of the traitor in the title, his counterpart in an American secretly spying for the Soviets, brought him to the point of needing to use that daring escape plan.
This book checked all the squares for truth and nail-biting tension and earned the often applied adjective of “best” in narrative nonfiction.