Treason
How a Russian Spy Led an American Journalist to a U.S. Double Agent
Chapter One
First Contact
I do not, truth be told, remember the exact day Vyacheslav Baranov walked into
my office in Moscow. It was the early summer of 1998, and I had been
Newsweek's bureau chief there for nearly two years, arriving just after
Boris Yeltsin was reelected in June of 1996 for what would turn out to be a
disastrous second term.
But that someone like Baranov could just walk into our office unannounced, the
fact that anyone could walk into our office unannounced, spoke to just
how much Russia had changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Our
office was on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, just up the broad, eight-lane thoroughfare
from the Russian White House, which at the time of the collapse of the Soviet
Union was the parliament, the place were Yeltsin famously stood atop a tank to
save the revolution, and just down from the huge arch that commemorates Russia's
rout of Napoleon. This was the middle of one of the world's most historic
cities, and that history surrounds you.
During the ... read full excerpt from Treason ebook
