The Mercenary

From acclaimed spy novelist Paul Vidich comes a taut new thriller following the attempted exfiltration of a KGB officer from the ever-changing - and always dangerous - USSR in the mid-1980s.

Moscow, 1985. The Soviet Union and its communist regime are in the last stages of decline, but remain opaque to the rest of the world - and still very dangerous. In this ever-shifting landscape, a senior KGB officer - code name GAMBIT - has approached the CIA Moscow Station chief with top secret military weapons intelligence and asked to be exfiltrated. GAMBIT demands that his handler be a former CIA officer, Alex Garin, a former KGB officer who defected to the American side.

The CIA had never successfully exfiltrated a KGB officer from Moscow, and the top brass do not trust Garin. But they have no other options: GAMBIT's secrets could be the deciding factor in the Cold War.

Garin is able to gain the trust of GAMBIT, but remains an enigma. Is he a mercenary acting in self-interest or are there deeper secrets from his past that would explain where his loyalties truly lie? As the date nears for GAMBIT's exfiltration, and with the walls closing in on both of them, Garin begins a relationship with a Russian agent and sets into motion a plan that could compromise everything.



Paul Vidich has had a distinguished career in music and media. Most recently, he served as Special Advisor to AOL and was Executive Vice President at the Warner Music Group, in charge of technology and global strategy. He serves on the Board of Directors of Poets & Writers and The New School for Social Research. A founder and publisher of the Storyville App, Vidich is also an award-winning author of short fiction. His novels, An Honorable Man, The Good Assassin, The Coldest Warrior and The Mercenary, are available from No Exit Press.



'An author in control of both his story and its arena. Vidich's style is sparse but atmospheric. Carefully deployed tradecraft and technical knowledge only add to the air of verisimilitude'



'In short, this is one of the year's premier spy novels, a close study of individual lives set against global turmoil, a heady blend of spy games and their very human consequences'



'Vidich's visualisation of time and place is masterly'



'Paul Vidich delivers a spy yarn that revels in the old certainties'



'Vidich carries the wintry mood of Soviet menace and danger powerfully, and his plot twists are tight and all too believable... A fast-moving and emotionally powerful ride into the darkness of both spying and the battered soul'