The book is well-researched and well-written, and it is a must for students of espionage. Like “A Spy Among Friends” and Ben Macintyre’s other books on the world of intelligence, such as “Agent Zigzag” and “Operation Mincemeat,” “The Spy and the Traitor” offers suspense and action and reads like a thriller. (Ben Macintyre also wrote a book about Philby called “A Spy Among Friends.”) Gordievsky was in a sense the U.K.’s return shot to the KGB after their success with Philby. Now safely in British hands with the operational case ended, Gordievsky’s 11 years of intelligence was exploited to the full.Īlthough Ben Macintyre compares Gordievsky to Ames, the former KGB officer and defector is perhaps the other side of the coin to Kim Philby, the British spy and traitor who defected to the Soviets in 1963. Much of his information had not been fully used, as it would have been incriminating.

In London, he had provided information that affected strategic thinking in 10 Downing Street and the White House. While working in Copenhagen, Gordievsky had supplied intelligence on the KGB’s Scandinavian operations. Now he sent a message to the British to rescue him and the daring operation to pull him out of the Soviet Union began. The British had earlier developed a plan to exfiltrate Gordievsky from Russia when he felt the day had come. He was interrogated, drugged and kept under surveillance in Moscow, but he had not yet been arrested and charged with espionage. Ames was interested in nothing else.”Īfter being tipped by Ames, the KGB became suspicious of Gordievsky.

Gordievsky had never been interested in the money. Ames chose to sell out America to the KGB in order to buy the American Dream he felt he deserved. He wanted to move out of his one-bedroom apartment, pay off his ex-wife, hold an expensive wedding, and own his car outright. “He needed to pay for Rosario’s shopping trips to Neiman Marcus and dinners at the Palm restaurant. But he would later offer a simpler explanation for his actions: ‘I did it for the money.’ “Twelve days before Gordievsky was due to take over as rezident, Aldrich Ames offered his services to the KGB,” Mr. Unbeknown to the CIA at the time, one of their own, CIA counterintelligence officer Aldrich Ames, was a spy for the KGB.

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