The Mercenary
A Novel
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From acclaimed spy novelist Paul Vidich comes a taut new thriller following the attempted exfiltration of a KGB officer from the ever-changing—and always dangerous—USSR in the mid-1980s.
Moscow, 1985. The Soviet Union and its communist regime are in the last stages of decline, but remain opaque to the rest of the world—and still very dangerous. In this ever-shifting landscape, a senior KGB officer—code name GAMBIT—has approached the CIA Moscow Station chief with top secret military weapons intelligence and asked to be exfiltrated. GAMBIT demands that his handler be a former CIA officer, Alex Garin, a former KGB officer who defected to the American side.
The CIA had never successfully exfiltrated a KGB officer from Moscow, and the top brass do not trust Garin. But they have no other options: GAMBIT's secrets could be the deciding factor in the Cold War.
Garin is able to gain the trust of GAMBIT, but remains an enigma. Is he a mercenary acting in self-interest or are there deeper secrets from his past that would explain where his loyalties truly lie? As the date nears for GAMBIT’s exfiltration, and with the walls closing in on both of them, Garin begins a relationship with a Russian agent and sets into motion a plan that could compromise everything.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in the mid-1980s, Vidich's intriguing if flawed fourth CIA novel opens in Moscow, where CIA agent George Mueller, last seen in 2017's The Good Assassin, is attempting to make a brush pass in Red Square with a senior KGB officer, code named Gambit, who wants to defect. Mueller spots Gambit, but before they can exchange identical cloth bags (Mueller's contains "another man's dinner," Gambit's "camera, film, radio, and rubles"), a Russian militiaman stops Mueller, and he ends up arrested by the KGB. In the aftermath of this failure, Gambit requests a different handler: Alexander Garin, a former CIA officer and the mercenary of the title. Born in the Soviet Union, Garin is an enigma; no one knows where his true loyalties lie. Vidich writes knowledgeably about the politics of the period, notably the impending changes to the U.S.S.R. with the rise of Gorbachev, and the spycraft rings true, but an enormous cast and labyrinthine plotting bog down the book. Still, fans of Cold War era spy fiction will be rewarded.
