summary ofThe Spy and the TraitorBook by Ben Macintyre

first KEY POINT

Loyalty has a vital place in the matters of nation-building

As a citizen of a nation, there are many things expected of you; the paramount of those expectations is loyalty—for the country and its interests. For a regular person, this quality is admirable, but it is a matter of life and death for a member of the secret service.

This reality was the case with a Russian spy, Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB agent born into the KGB, loved, formed, and almost destroyed. He was loyal to Mother Russia and the secret service. He loved his country and bought into the false message of uniting the world under the peaceful communal reign of the Soviet Union and thought joining its secret service would help him change the world.

His loyalty, though, was blinding; he couldn’t see that he was fighting for the wrong side. Unbeknownst to him, he was helping the enemy of the world change, grow, and spread. And as he slowly came to this realization, his loyalty began to waver and shift from Russia and the Soviet Union to the nearest beacon of freedom and hope—Great Britain.The thing with loyalty is it can be redirected to a much better cause and still be valid. So as Oleg Gordievsky began his descent from the lofty Soviet cause, he was found by agents from MI6 who needed someone to help them get inside intel from the KGB to take down the Soviet Union.In the following chapters, we will be introduced to the struggles Gordievsky faced in his mission to save the world, a world he no longer knew to be evil or good. Readers are given a front-row seat to the dismantling of what was considered an imminent threat to freedom and democracy aided by a spy who believed he was on the right side, only to be awakened. Loyalty is an important trait, especially to one’s nation, but what do you do when your country is the enemy? This was the dilemma Gordievsky was made to deal with.