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The 1993 background plot, involving the exfiltration of an agent from the Soviet Union reminded me strongly of Ben Mcintyre’s real life account in his brilliant book A Spy abd a Traitor . It becomes clear that he had been a victim of a retaliatory attack commissioned and organised by the Russians, following on from similar outrages against Alexander Litvinencko, Sergei Skripal and Alexei Navalny. Cumming gives a tantalising insight into the world of intelligence and the growing diplomatic and intelligence dispute with Russia - in a world where the gloves have come off. The mission doubles as a way to frame the Russian officer as revenge for some of the fallout of the 1993 mission.
They succeed, but the escape is a harrowing one and on their tail the entire time is a brutal and very suspicious member of the KGB/FSK by the name of Gromik. Cumming's timely second installment, following Box 88 (2022), stands alone but also adds breadth and depth to the story of Lachlan Kite. The latter part follows a protracted follow-up job in the present day, set in UAE, but it’s all rather dull and over-explained.
In the first timeline, it’s 1993 and Kite accepts an assignment to go to Russia undercover to spirit out a scientist who will otherwise be used by the Russian state to develop chemical weapons. Now the director of BOX 88 operations in the UK, Kite discovers he has been placed on the 'JUDAS' list - a record of enemies of Russia who have been targeted for assassination. The story spans the decade from the transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997 to present-day Shanghai.
The ‘past’ portion is told in a large chunk and describes the mission to exfiltrate a scientist from Russia. That same president can accuse his opponent's son of corruption while his own children enrich themselves in full view of the American people. A former British Secret Service recruit, he is a contributing editor of The Week magazine and lives in London. The Hidden Man also examines the clandestine role played by SIS and the CIA during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.There’s unease, the claustrophobic sense of the watching FSK (former KGB and now FSB) and the uncertainty of evading them, there’s danger at every turn, who is trustworthy and who can be bribed and there are moments of high tension. This all hits way too close to home for Kite because in 1993, when he was still a student operative, Kite was sent to the Soviet Union posing as injured operative Peter Galvin who was there to be a language teacher.
The Spanish Game was described by The Times as one of the six finest spy novels of all time, alongside Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Funeral in Berlin and The Scarlet Pimpernel.In March 2008, Charles Cumming published an interactive online story, The 21 Steps, as part of a Penguin We Tell Stories project.
The switch to modern times shows how things have changed with the use of technology and a different type of intelligence game. One minor niggle is that Eton College, England's poshest secondary school (think Prince William and Boorish Johnson ) is disguised as 'Alford' for reasons that escape me.So even though Cumming tells me that Lockie loves Isobel and his daughter and wants to reconcile, everything else in the book makes me feel like Lockie is still in love with Martha and is a bit of a womanizer. The former Russian FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned with polonium-210 in London had been listed as JUDAS 47. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Spanning London, Russia and Dubai, Judas 62 is an old school espionage thriller that aficionados of the genre will love! This wasn’t anything significant to the plot of the book, it was just side conversations between characters to fill pages, but it makes one wonder the author’s intent in putting them in there.
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