The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

by Ben Macintyre

Homosexuality was illegal in the USSR, but homosexuals were recruited to entrap gay foreigners, who could then be blackmailed. The KGB was unapologetically unprincipled.

In the West, of course, blood is donated by members of the public. The only payment is a biscuit, and sometimes a cup of tea. The Kremlin, however, assuming that capitalism penetrated every aspect of Western life, believed that a ‘blood bank’ was, in fact, a bank, where blood could be bought and sold. No one in the KGB outstations dared to draw attention to this elemental misunderstanding.

In addition, the KGB sometimes sprayed the footwear of suspected spies with a chemical odour imperceptible to humans, but easily traced by sniffer dogs. Each MI6 officer kept two pairs of identical shoes, so that he could slip on an uncontaminated pair if necessary.