The New York Carolina Club is excited to get the book club going again! Our first book club book of the year will be, The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre. The book untangles the case of Soviet Union/KGB agent turned British/MI6 spy, Oleg Gordievsky whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War.
Mark your calendars for Wednesday, March 23 at 7 p.m. The book is available on Amazon, at local bookstores and on Audible (with a 30-day free trial!). Zoom info below and keep reading for quick book summary:
Meeting URL: https://ab-inbev.zoom.us/j/94862264774?pwd=bXNISVRvb1BBNm5pNGVtbVovZENSQT09&from=addon
Meeting ID: 948 6226 4774
Password: 313985
If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation’s communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union’s top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States’s nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky’s name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain’s obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets.
Unfolding the three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky’s nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre’s latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man’s hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.
Reach out with any questions and feel free to invite any friends!