It is tempting to see him as a sort of mirror image of Philby, but there is one crucial difference. Bright and studious, he won a place at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations – the “Soviet Harvard” – and it was almost inevitable that he would end up in the Soviet Union’s most elite corps: the first chief directorate, the KGB division responsible for spying on foreigners, rather than harassing Jews, Baptists and free thinkers at home. Born in 1938, just as the great terror was winding down, his father was a secret policeman and his older brother became one too.
In fact, it feels a little like he has been waiting all the time to tell us about Gordievsky, since this story is so much bigger than those he has told before.
Those books were good, but this one’s better. Over the past decade, from his breakout success with Agent Zigzag to his biography of Kim Philby, A Spy Among Friends, Macintyre has built an entirely justified reputation for his true spy thrillers. His story has been told before, not least by himself in the autobiography he wrote in retirement in Britain, but it has found its ideal chronicler in this exceptionally rewarding book by Ben Macintyre.
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