Redwood
About This Book
In 1981, Vladimir Kuzichkin was a KGB major, codenamed Redwood, and the most capable Soviet officer stationed in Iran. The Islamic revolution had just reshaped the country, and he was running agents there and working with a covert network of Iranian communists to weaken the new government. He also carried a private secret of a sexual nature. If it came out, his colleagues would humiliate him, he would lose his career, and he would be sent home in disgrace. With nowhere else to turn, he approached the one organisation he thought might help: Britain's MI6. That approach set off one of the most remarkable true spy stories of the Cold War, played out under the shadow of possible nuclear war. Ben Macintyre follows it through the back streets of Tehran, through violent unrest, and into the quiet offices where intelligence officers weigh their next move. It is a world where nobody's motives are quite what they appear and where being found out means death. Kuzichkin was helping Moscow's leaders plan the overthrow of the Ayatollah's young regime, and American officials were privately considering a nuclear response if the plan went ahead. Getting his information out to the West fell to Ian McCredie, a resourceful young MI6 officer working undercover. Then Iranian intelligence and the KGB both began closing in on their double agent. McCredie had to devise an escape plan for Kuzichkin that was daring, improbable and very likely to fail, with the course of the Cold War riding on the outcome. The book is as much about people as about politics. It follows one man's courage and the unexpected consequences that still echo today, and it tells of an unlikely friendship between spies serving opposing sides, along with marriage, loyalty and betrayal. Macintyre draws on archival material not seen before and on interviews with those involved. Readers of his earlier book The Spy and the Traitor will find themselves back in that world, where the fate of millions depends on split-second choices made under pressure.
ISBN: 9780593728123
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