Mercenary

Mercenary Synopsis

From acclaimed spy novelist Paul Vidich comes a taut new thriller following the attempted exfiltration of a KGB officer from the ever-changing-and always dangerous-USSR in the mid-1980s. Moscow, 1985. The Soviet Union and its communist regime are in the last stages of decline, but remain opaque to the rest of the world-and still very dangerous.

In this ever-shifting landscape, a senior KGB officer-code name GAMBIT-has approached the CIA Moscow Station chief with top secret military weapons intelligence and asked to be exfiltrated. GAMBIT demands that his handler be a former CIA officer, Alex Garin, a former KGB officer who defected to the American side. The CIA had never successfully exfiltrated a KGB officer from Moscow, and the top brass do not trust Garin.

But they have no other options:

• GAMBIT&apos
• s secrets could be the deciding factor in the Cold War. Garin is able to gain the trust of GAMBIT, but remains an enigma. Is he a mercenary acting in self-interest or are there deeper secrets from his past that would explain where his loyalties truly lie?As the date nears for GAMBIT&apos
• s exfiltration, and with the walls closing in on both of them, Garin begins a relationship with a Russian agent and sets into motion a plan that could compromise everything. Praise for Paul Vidich&apos
• Vidich perfectly captures the era&apos
• s paranoid mood&apos
• - The Times&apos
• A terse and convincing thriller... This stand-alone work reaches a new level of moral complexity and brings into stark relief the often contradictory nature of spycraft&apos
• - Wall Street Journal&apos
• In the manner of Charles Cumming and recent le Carr Vidich pits spies on the same side against one another in a kind of internal cold war&apos
• - Booklist