At the age of eighteen, Anatoly Markovich Gurevich read Soviet writer N. G. Smirnov’s espionage thriller Diary of a Spy and resolved to follow in the footsteps of its fearless and nimble protagonist, a British agent named Edward Kent. When Gurevich joined the ranks of Soviet intelligence, he signed all his secret cables with the code name Kent. He is a spy who has named himself after a fictional spy.
