Soviet Spy

Malko Linge is assigned to tail a novice terrorist who has a plot to blow up Air Force One—and the weapons to make it happen. In New Jersey, Parviz Amritzar is mourning for his family—killed by a U.S. airstrike back in Pakistan—and vowing revenge against his adoptive country. He devises a...

Spies are a feature of countless works of fiction in which they often discover secrets on which the fate of nations hang in the balance. Reality is generally rather more mundane as spies often gather low-level intelligence that only makes sense when it is examined by analysts and compared to information from other sources. Espionage provides clues to what the enemy is planning, but on its own it rarely changes the course of a war. Moreover, real spies are generally anonymous and not the bold, swashbuckling action heroes depicted in fiction.