Although the risk was too great to do any spying in Russia, Gordievsky learned English in hopes of being posted abroad again.

Subsequently, as Chapter 5 describes, Gordievsky returned to the Soviet Union, where he divorced his first wife and married Leila, a woman he began an affair with while in Denmark. After more than a year back in Moscow, Gordievsky and his wife returned to Denmark, and Chapter 3 covers this period, during which he was successfully recruited to work as a spy for MI6, the British foreign intelligence service.Ĭhapter 4 describes Gordievsky’s work with two successive MI6 handlers during the years 1975-77. Chapter 2 covers Gordievsky’s first stint in Denmark, where he reveled in the West’s freedoms and rich culture. The first chapter then backs up to tell Gordievsky’s story from his early years with his parents through 1965, when he was first posted overseas as a new KGB agent. With this revelation, the Introduction abruptly ends.

The book opens with a brief Introduction describing a scene that took place in May 1985: When KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky, a spy for British intelligence, returned from London to his apartment in Moscow, he realized upon unlocking the door that his apartment had been broken into-and that the KGB was after him-because all three locks were secured, but he’d locked only two of them.

This guide is based on the first edition hardcover by Crown Publishing.

The spy and the traitor ben macintyre