Spoiler Alert: This review, like all of mine, presumes you have already read the book.
William Hood tells a story similar to that of Adolf Tolkachev a generation later: Motivated not by greed but by outrage over past injustices inflicted on his family, a well-placed Russian provides the US with priceless information. Eventually, though, he is strung along too long until finally he is undone – not (as far as can be determined) so much through carelessness on our part or clever detective work on Moscow’s, but likely through a mole. Thus the title could refer not just to this book’s hero Pyotr Popov but to the villain who probably led to his downfall, George Blake. The particular error that undid Tolkachev was made in the US, the one that probably undid Popov in London, but generally speaking there was little warning (in Popov’s case) or virtually none (in Tolkachev’s).
To be fair, Popov never wanted to defect. Even so, both he and Tolkachev should have been brought in before it was too late, no matter how reluctant they may have been. And to be very fair, William Hood does not place the blame for undoing Popov unequivocally on Blake. He leaves open the possibility that Popov’s own carelessness was partly to blame.
Based no doubt on personal experience, Hood holds to the view that those closest to the action have greater realism about what is possible and what not, while those in DC are tempted by unrealistic projects, leading them to ask for the impossible – a trope of this genre, especially if the author is a case officer who has spent significant time on site. He characterizes some of the ideas that originate in Langley as “unrealistically ambitious headquarters schemes” and “the height of folly.” (pg. 112)
The bulk of the book relies on information provided by “Gregory Domnin,” who (according to Wikipedia) appears to be based on an agent named George Kisevalter. Towards the end of the book, though, with the cloak and dagger story over, Hood turns away from his source to spend the last fifty pages or so speculating on what likely happened to Popov after his arrest and what exactly may have led to his undoing. To my own surprise, it was this last section – which by the way provides some background to the movie “The Good Shepherd” – I found the most interesting.
Hood also reviews Soviet-era literature on the case, including a close reading of accounts that appeared in Izvestya in 1963. Some of his deductions may be speculative, but Hood’s speculation is informed. He knows, for example, exactly how cumbersome it is to encipher a text, leading him to deduce that a wordy thank-you message Popov allegedly wrote was probably enhanced for publication, to say the least. He is able to tell which documents are authentic and which faked based on their style as much as content.
On the whole, the book is quite well-written – not one agent is described with the cliché “legendary.” Hood is level-headed and unsentimental – which is quite different from unfeeling. In short, just the sort of guide one would want in this labyrinth of mirrors.
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