Book Profile

From the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor comes the ultimate true-life Cold War thriller: the untold story of a Russian double agent with a desperate secret—and the key to stopping a nuclear apocalypse. “Ben Macintyre has a rare ability to turn history and espionage upside down and give us true, colorful stories that astound us as they draw us in. Redwood might be his best.”—John Grisham In 1981, KGB Major Vladimir Kuzichkin, codenamed “Redwood,” was the best Soviet officer in Iran, running spies in the wake of the Islamic revolution and working with a hidden network of Iranian communists to undermine the new regime. But Kuzichkin had a problem, a sexual secret that, if revealed, would humiliate him with his colleagues, cost him his job, and send him into exile. Desperate for a solution, he reached out to the only place he believed could help: Britain’s MI6. So begins one of the most astounding true spy stories of the Cold War, set against the terrifying prospect of nuclear armageddon. Taking readers through shadowy back alleys of Tehran, across bloody streets and into cloistered intelligence offices, Ben Macintyre unfolds a world in turmoil, where no one’s motive is what it seems, and exposure means death. As Kuzichkin helps the Soviet leadership plot an overthrow of the Ayatollah’s fledgling regime—and the American government secretly contemplates a nuclear response if they do—it falls on MI6’s resourceful young undercover officer Ian McCredie to spirit Kuzichkin’s vital information back to the West. But when both Iranian intelligence and the KGB close in on the Russian double-agent, McCredie must design an improbable high-stakes escape plan for Kuzichkin, in which failure is almost certain and the direction of the Cold War hangs in the balance. This is the gripping tale of one man’s courage, and its extraordinary unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It’s about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, and betrayal. Drawing on never-before-seen archival material and revealing interviews with the participants, Redwood plunges readers back into the world of The Spy and the Traitor, where the fate of millions turns on the split-second decisions of spies under pressure.