Spooks are a special breed, and Charles Cumming captures the personalities of historic and contemporary spies in his intriguing novel of "post-war, post Cold-war post-911" espionage.
The reader glimpses the strange lives of those who have joined this shadowy world. Quick-thinking Tanya is assigned to watch a fellow citizen who is sniffing at a past cover-up in the firm itself.
As often happens with spies, they are given no background on their assignments beyond the "need to know." When in pursuing her quarry, Tanya gets too close to the truth about the shrouded past of the MI6 boss and a Russian politician, she is abruptly re-assigned.
Meanwhile she has discovered that academic historian Sam Geddes, professor of Russian Studies at UCL, has been induced by certain personal financial pressures to pursue some MI6 history for his own purposes. He intends to write a book that will expose some history that the head of the agency does not want known.
Historically, Oxford and Cambridge were home to many idealistic communists in the thirties. Four young men from Trinity College were recruited to spy for the Soviet Union. The fifth of these infamous Cambridge Spies, John Cairncross,went on to pass ENIGMA code secrets to the Russians from Bletchley Park. He and the others were eventually exposed, and Philby and Maclean openly defected to the Soviet Union. But was there a sixth man?
In the novel, the only person who was there and remembers those times is a 91-year-old ex-spy and Trinity alum with an altered identity. Sam is getting close to extracting important information from this man, but although Tanya is no longer responsible for keeping an eye on him, Sam Geddes recklessly pursues his quest for information to Berlin, and then to Vienna.
Violence happens in both places, and a common denominator is the presence of the Russian agent Alexander Grek. This is a man the reader has seen in London. He's a chilling character whose "$500 loafers caress the damp path" where he interviews a traitor his henchmen are about to kill.
Fortunately for Sam, Tanya has a good head on her shoulders. She also has a conscience, and excellent "exfiltration" skills, which she deploys in such a way as to save a lot more than the life of Dr. Sam Geddes,
Author Charles Cumming is himself a former British Secret Service recruit. Now he works as a contributing editor to a London magazine and writes spy novels.
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