‘The Mercenary’ by Paul Vidich is his fourth CIA novel which is an excellent espionage thriller that keeps his high standards from his previous novels up. He manages to capture the suspicion, fear and paranoia that marked the Cold War battle between the CIA and KGB.
In 1985, Moscow a former CIA officer Aleksander Garin is given the job of getting a senior KGB officer code-name “Gambit”, out of Moscow and he has requested Garin to be involved, who we learn was a KGB agent before he defected to the USA.
Six years earlier, Aleksander was involved in a similar mission which ended in failure.
Aleksander puts the plan in place to bring Gambit, his wife and son, safely across the Russian border to Czechoslovakia.
If successful, Gambit will be the only senior KGB officer ever to have been got out of Moscow. He has already delivered copies of top-secret papers and promises to deliver more, including the Soviet Union’s plans for “look down” radar, when he reaches safety.
Once in Moscow, Aleksander has to deal with American Embassy staff who are really suspicious about his reasons for being there while also arranging to meet in secret with Gambit to organise his escape.
To some in the CIA’s Moscow Station, Aleksander is only a mercenary, but we find out that he has deeper secrets that go back to his childhood.
Now, with the Soviet Union on the downward spiral, the CIA sees Gambit as someone who could help bring the balance into their favour
Almost from the start, Garin’s plan begins to crumble as he becomes romantically involved with Natalya, a former ballerina who works for the KGB. As the story speeds to a shattering climax the reader is subjected to the nerve-wracking escape bid by Aleksander, Gambit and his family.
Throughout the story, there is the question of trust. This is just like a cat and mouse game, can anyone be trusted? Even Aleksander?
A definitely tense spy thriller! I was hooked good and proper with this book. The twists and turns just never stop and as I said you don’t even know who to trust EVER. It taught me a lot that I wasn’t aware of about the cold war and the stuff. I found it another book that you could say educated me as well as entertained. The climax of the story was almost like a crescendo as it seemed an almost impossible task and I was on the edge of my seat reading and hoping. A brilliant example of a great spy thriller of today.
Thank you to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours and Oldcastle Books for the copy of the book.
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