The Spy and the Traitor
The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
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Narrated by:
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Ben Macintyre
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By:
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Ben Macintyre
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
*The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller*
*Shortlisted for the 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize*
*Bill Gates' Top 5 Books for 2020*
'THE BEST TRUE SPY STORY I HAVE EVER READ' JOHN LE CARRÉ
A thrilling Cold War story about a KGB double agent, by one of Britain's greatest historians - now with a new afterword
On a warm July evening in 1985, a middle-aged man stood on the pavement of a busy avenue in the heart of Moscow, holding a plastic carrier bag. In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket.
The man was a spy. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia. So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever...
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By: Eva Dillon
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In the Enemy's House
- The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1946, genius linguist and codebreaker Meredith Gardner discovered that the KGB was running an extensive network of strategically placed spies inside the United States, whose goal was to infiltrate American intelligence and steal the nation's military and atomic secrets. Over the course of the next decade, he and young FBI supervisor Bob Lamphere worked together on Venona, a top-secret mission to uncover the Soviet agents and protect the Holy Grail of Cold War espionage - the atomic bomb.
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Excellent non-fiction spy story
- By Katherine on 10-13-18
By: Howard Blum
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Spymaster
- Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief
- By: Tennent H. Bagley
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From the dark days of World War II through the Cold War, Sergey A. Kondrashev was a major player in Russia’s notorious KGB espionage apparatus. Rising through its ranks through hard work and keen understanding of how the spy and political games are played, he “handled” American and British defectors, recruited Western operatives as double agents, served as a ranking officer at the East Berlin and Vienna KGB bureaus, and tackled special assignments from the Kremlin.
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An brilliant personal Cold War perspective
- By Iamnotaspy on 01-09-15
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The Spy Who Knew Too Much
- An Ex-CIA Officer’s Quest Through a Legacy of Betrayal
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: Steve Hendrickson
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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On a sunlit morning in September 1978, a sloop drifts aimlessly across the Chesapeake Bay. The cabin reveals signs of a struggle, and “classified” documents, live 9 mm cartridges, and a top-secret “burst” satellite communications transmitter are discovered aboard. But where is the boat’s owner, former CIA officer John Paisley? One man may hold the key to finding out. Tennent “Pete” Bagley was once a rising star in America’s spy aristocracy, and many expected he’d eventually become CIA director.
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The, too long, story of an obsession
- By Tony on 10-30-22
By: Howard Blum
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A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich
- By: Lucas Delattre
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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A work of remarkable scholarship that moves with the swift pace of a John le Carre thriller, A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich is a chilling addition to the literature of espionage. In 1943, a young official named Fritz Kolbe from the German foreign ministry arranged to meet with Allen Dulles, then an OSS officer in Switzerland and later the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
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100% very good
- By Coco on 06-11-07
By: Lucas Delattre
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Sisters in Resistance
- How a German Spy, a Banker's Wife, and Mussolini's Daughter Outwitted the Nazis
- By: Tilar J. Mazzeo
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1944, Benito Mussolini's daughter, Edda, gave Hitler and her father an ultimatum: release her husband, Galeazzo Ciano, from prison, or risk her leaking her husband's journals to the press. To avoid the peril of exposing Nazi lies, Hitler and Mussolini hunted for the diaries for months, determined to destroy them. Hilde Beetz, a German spy, was deployed to seduce Ciano to learn the diaries' location and take them from Edda. Drawing from in‑depth research and first-person interviews, Mazzeo gives listeners a riveting look into this little‑known moment in history.
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Fascinating WW2 account of women in resistance
- By lgmichael on 10-30-23
By: Tilar J. Mazzeo
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Hunting Eichmann
- Chasing Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi
- By: Neal Bascomb
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Neal Bascomb has garnered critical acclaim for such riveting nonfiction as Higher and Red Mutiny. Based on extensive interviews and previously classified details, Hunting Eichmann is a compelling account of the relentless hunt for the nefarious Adolf Eichmann.
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A Fascinating Story of Eichmann's Capture
- By S. Perry on 03-15-09
By: Neal Bascomb
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Target Tokyo
- The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring
- By: Gordon Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon
- Narrated by: David Rapkin
- Length: 20 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Sorge was dispatched to Tokyo in 1933 to serve the spymasters of Moscow. For eight years, he masqueraded as a Nazi journalist and burrowed deep into the German embassy, digging for the secrets of Hitler's invasion of Russia and the Japanese plans for the East. In a nation obsessed with rooting out moles, he kept a high profile - boozing, womanizing, and operating entirely under his own name.
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Riveting
- By Jean on 10-02-14
By: Gordon Prange, and others
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Best of Enemies
- The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War
- By: Gus Russo, Eric Dezenhall
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1978, CIA maverick Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko were new arrivals on the Washington, D.C., intelligence scene, with Jack working out of the CIA's counterintelligence office and Gennady out of the Soviet Embassy. Both men were assigned to seduce the other into betraying his country in the final days of the Cold War, but instead the men ended up becoming the best of friends. Theirs is a friendship that never should have happened, and their story is chock full of treachery, darkly comic misunderstandings, bureaucratic inanity, and landmark intelligence breakthroughs.
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Really?
- By M.E. on 01-13-19
By: Gus Russo, and others
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Argo
- How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History
- By: Antonio Mendez, Matt Baglio
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there's a little-known footnote to the crisis: six Americans escaped. And a midlevel agent named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them. Armed with foreign film visas, Mendez and an unlikely team of CIA agents and Hollywood insiders traveled to Tehran....
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Better Than the Movie
- By Debra Garfinkle on 11-28-12
By: Antonio Mendez, and others
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Comrade J
- Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War
- By: Pete Earley
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Spymaster, defector, double agent....Here is the remarkable true story of the man who ran Russia's post-cold-war spy program in America. The revelations are stunning. Many spies have told their stories. None has the astonishing immediacy, relevance, and cautionary warnings of Comrade J.
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Some Inaccuracies, but still good
- By Shopaholic on 09-21-08
By: Pete Earley
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Enemies of the People
- My Family's Journey to America
- By: Kati Marton
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In this true-life thriller, Kati Marton draws on her skill as an investigative reporter to discover who her journalist parents really were---and how they survived the Nazis in Budapest and imprisonment by the Soviets during the Cold War.
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Couldn't stop listening
- By Jane on 04-09-10
By: Kati Marton
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Double Cross
- The True Story of the D-Day Spies
- By: Ben Macintyre
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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On June 6, 1944, 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy and suffered an astonishingly low rate of casualties. A stunning military achievement, it was also a masterpiece of trickery. Operation Fortitude, which protected and enabled the invasion, and the Double Cross system, which specialized in turning German spies into double agents, tricked the Nazis into believing that the Allied attacks would come in Calais and Norway rather than Normandy.
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Are You Sure Ben Macintyre Wrote This?
- By Sheila Quaid on 08-01-12
By: Ben Macintyre
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Into the Lion's Mouth
- The True Story of Dusko Popov: Word War II Spy, Patriot, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond
- By: Larry Loftis
- Narrated by: Eric G. Dove
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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James Bond has nothing on Dusko Popov. A double agent for the Abwehr, MI5 and MI6, and the FBI during World War II, Popov seduced numerous women, spoke five languages, and was a crack shot, all while maintaining his cover as a Yugoslavian diplomat....
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A boring account of exciting events.
- By Amazon Customer on 11-30-18
By: Larry Loftis
What listeners say about The Spy and the Traitor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-19-23
Superb
Could not stop listening. Another brill Ben MacI book. Recommend highly. On the edge of my seat.
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- Neuron
- 10-18-18
Leave a beer capsule under the bench in the park
This book is as good as it gets when it comes to spy stories. It starts out strong – diving straight into the story – and then it just keeps going. I can be a drifter, but it was impossible to drift away while reading this book. It keeps the reader engaged at all times.
The protagonist is Oleg Gordievsky. A real person! Indeed, an actual former KGB spy who defected and joined MI6, becoming one of the most important spies in the cold war. If you like the show “The Americans” then you are almost guaranteed to enjoy this book as well. I particularly appreciated the descriptions of how spies communicate with one another. It can go something like this: If spy X leaves an orange peel under the right side of a bench in the southwest corner of some park, then that means that someone is onto him. But if instead, he leaves a blue chalk mark on a light pole on street Y in SOHO, that means that he wants to meet.
The descriptions of spy communication are both fascinating and humorous. Indeed, as one would expect it can sometimes become confusing such as when one spy was supposed to drop a beer capsule instead dropped a ginger beer capsule. After a lengthy discussion it was decided that the spy probably did not distinguish between ginger beer and real beer.
Nevertheless, there is a lot more to this book. You get insight into the political atmosphere in the 1980s, You will encounter politicians as well as spies. Yet, first and foremost, you get a top-notch cat and mouse spy chase. And the best thing is that the story is, as far as I can tell, entirely factual. The author makes it clear when he is speculating, which I appreciate. If you are at all into these types of books, then you can’t go wrong with this book
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7 people found this helpful
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- Mrs. Penelope Goward
- 12-24-18
Exciting!
Informative, exciting story. Well told & narrated. We listened during a long & boring drive. We could hardly wait to get in the car after each stop.
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- Arno
- 05-14-19
Absolute must Read / Hear ! excellent
gives great detail to the cold war period. how a KGB spy saved the world from nuclear war.
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- E Kriegler
- 04-05-23
Fantastic book, and great audiobook.
Top notch thriller, excellent history and great performance. I have seldom enjoyed a title this much.
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- Orca
- 10-23-19
Nicely paced and stranger than fiction
Enjoyable and insightful look at the odd universe of old school spies and trade craft; the excitement and the banality. Ben MacIntyre is a fine writer and narrator.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-07-18
Brilliant Audio Book
This book is brilliant well worth reading ,it gave a great insight on the workings of the KGB and how fragile relations were between east and west
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-18-19
Superb!
What an enthralling saga.Was embroiled in the spy craft of the era from page 1.
A must listen
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- Lawrence Dembo
- 08-18-20
Who knew?
Quite the most extraordinary story.
Bravery and ideology from a time not so long ago.
Beautifully written, researched and read.
Couldn’t put it down.
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- Alessia U
- 04-16-21
Enjoyable
Historically, the book may actually not reflect the real facts. Nonetheless, the storyline is interesting, structured and well read, and I enjoyed it. It intrigued me into futher research about the character and the particular period of time.
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