THE ILLEGALS

Russia's most audacious spies and the plot to infiltrate the West

SHAUN WALKER

448pp. Profile. 22 [pounds sterling].

Last August, the same negotiations that brought the American journalist Evan Gershkovich home, after sixteen months' incarceration in Russia, sent Anna and Artem Dultsev in the opposite direction, to Moscow. The Dultsevs were deep-cover spies, or "illegals", caught after living for years in Slovenia as an Argentine couple with two young children who knew nothing of their parents' true identities. No less a figure than Vladimir Putin met them at the airport with hugs, flowers and a widely reported message for the bewildered children: "Buenas noches".

Russian spies playing Argentinians in Slovenia? The whole episode, eerie yet somehow predictable, had a Cold War throwback feel. But as Shaun Walker's exciting new book, The Illegals: Russia's most audacious spies and the plot to infiltrate the West, tells us, the phenomenon of Russian deep-cover spying both predated the Cold War and outlived it. Walker emphasizes the importance of foreign intelligence work to the Soviet project since its earliest days--indeed, since its prehistory in the tsarist-era Russian revolutionary movement. The Bolsheviks were experts in konspiratsiya, which, as the author explains, translates closer to "subterfuge" than "conspiracy". Konspiratsiya meant the use of...