Smoke and mirrors
Vladimir Kuzichkin during his time as a KGB agent in Iran
The West’s impression of the KGB, a ruthless and efficient organisation which you crossed at your peril, was very different from the KGB Kuzichkin experienced: a paranoid entity stuffed with bullies, drunks and incompetents.
ON 1 OCTOBER 1981, a giant 6ft 4in Russian walked into the British compound in Tehran and announced to the startled minister, Nicholas Barrington, “I am KGB. I wish to defect to England. You will know how to arrange this.” Barrington didn’t, but he knew a man who did, and the double life of Vladimir Kuzichkin, alias Redwood, one of the most productive spies of the Cold War, was about to begin.
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