Shadrin: The Spy Who Never Came Back

This intensely moving human drama — a true story of adventure, intrigue, love and devotion — is also a documented delineation of government duplicity at the highest levels. It is a riveting picture of the dark world of espionage and intelligence — a world that will never look the same once you have read this book. When U. S. intelligence officials asked Nicholas Shadrin to become a spy, he at first refused. A former Soviet naval captain who had defected six years before, he was now an American citizen and happily married. For close to a year he continued to refuse requests that he become a double agent. Only when one of the highest officials in U. S. intelligence, a personal friend, exerted pressure on him did Shadrin agree to undertake the assignment. For years Shadrin played the nerve-racking role of double agent, in the belief that he was serving his country. But he was more than a double agent. He was actually a pawn in a chess game of espionage that was far more dangerous than he could have imagined. Then, while on a mysterious assignment in Vienna, Shadrin disappeared. When his frantic wife and friends tried to find out what had happened to him they met up with a wall of official indifference, obfuscation and deceit. That was only the beginning of Ewa Shadrin's long nightmare of government rebuffs, denials and misdirection — a deliberate program to conceal Nick's unwitting role in one of the strangest cases in the history of espionage.