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Everyone has secrets. So does every country. Intelligence services exist to keep their nation’s secrets and to uncover those of its adversaries. At no time were those objectives more paramount than during what’s often referred to as the Cold War. America’s CIA and Russia’s KGB were front and center in the geopolitical struggle to keep one from succeeding over the other, not simply militarily but ideologically as well. This short novel takes readers inside a clandestine operation to turn a Soviet agent into an American asset. Beirut, Lebanon, is the initial setting. There, American intelligence operatives concoct a plan to persuade a Russian KGB man, Petrov, to become a double agent, a resource for the United States.
Author Estes, an ex-operations officer himself, lays out both the psychological framework and the physical steps taken to turn Petrov. As the writer does so, readers are exposed to complex procedures for passing information and people, plus clandestine surveillance techniques that enable the CIA to keep tabs on their target. Estes unspools his characters’ intellectual moves with precision and attention to detail. His prose often reads like an operational plan in action. Yet he doesn’t do so at the expense of the emotional toll that secrecy, lies, and divided loyalties take on the individuals involved. The human aspects of both his protagonists and antagonists are part and parcel of this intriguing look into the world of spies and counterspies. Plus, he manages to reveal a big surprise near the end. Most say the Cold War is in the past. However, this book may make readers think twice about just what does and doesn’t still go on in the shadowy world of international intelligence.