Tower of Secrets

I’m not a big movie watcher, so I’ve never seen a Bond movie and pulp fiction rarely interests me (admittedly, I’ve read the original Bourne books — and liked them better than the movies, of course), but I know that bad-guy Russians, usually affiliated with the KGB play a role in at least some of those movies and a lot of fictional spy thrillers.  It, of course, fits well with the Cold War that wasn’t so much a motif through the 1980s, but real life.  It’s an easy way to capture people’s imaginations and draw them into a story.  What has always been even more intriguing than those stories, though, is real life.  I remember Cuban and Eastern European athletes defecting during international competitions and thought that was brave of them.  Movies like Night Crossing regular people defecting had an even larger impact on me.  These people knew the value of freedom and were willing to risk their lives for it.

Tower of Secrets: A Real Life Spy Thriller by Victor Sheymov (ISBN: 978-0-9858930-4-0) is a story more in line with stories of regular people defecting than athletes, but Sheymov wasn’t exactly a regular guy.  He was an officer in one of the Soviet security agencies, the same KGB that was the subject of so much Western fiction.  The KGB he describes in the book often sounds much more like what one imagines working in the IRS or some other boring bureaucratic organization would be like, but he also talks about the things the KGB is more famous for.  Sheymov described his life abroad as an employee of the Soviet Union, working to protect the Soviets’ state secrets and he described his life at home in the Soviet Union.  I found both of them to be rather interesting portrayals of life.  He tells of both the good and the bad, lending an air of credibility to the work.  Eventually, Sheymov and his wife start to question the system they live in.  This is especially shocking to Sheymov himself because he works as part of the system and some of his initial resistance to going against that system is the result of the privilege it has afforded him and his family.  Finally, though, they come to the realization that whatever positives they get from the communist system don’t outweigh the negatives for themselves, their daughter, and for people around them.  The USSR was pretty locked down, though, especially for someone working for the government.  Sheymov and his wife cooked up a plan to get out, but had to make contact with a Western intelligence agency to make that work.  He chose the Americans and ran a risky operation by himself while on a business trip to Poland, where he disguised himself, hopped out a bathroom window, walked into the American embassy, and then returned to his comrades.  Sometime later, more disguises, a train journey, riding in a car with false spaces under the back seats, and smugglers all played a role in getting the Sheymovs to the West.

I enjoyed reading the book.  I found a few similarities to Next Stop Execution: some good descriptions of everyday Soviet life that grounded the book and made it interesting for those of us who weren’t there and some of the discussions about working for what was the world’s most feared intelligence service were neat to read.  I also found the authors’ egoism to be similar.  This book also suffers from being self-published, so there are more than a handful of typos, which can be kind of distracting.  The story of getting that first contact with the Americans set up and then the plan to get the Sheymovs out of the USSR, though, was gripping stuff and well worth the read.  Just like the book’s subtitle promises, it was just like a good story and less like a memoir.  Sheymov’s discussion of his ideological change was also very interesting and it involved various aspects of life.  He accurately noted that communism promised security and justice, but did so at a great price: freedom, both economic and intellectual.  He also grappled with the knowledge that communism has killed many thousands of people, oddly, in the name of equality.  Socialism, in the end, is built for preventing others from succeeding instead of helping people achieve.  These accurate criticisms of socialism and communism are extremely relevant today and serve as the most powerful of Sheymov’s fun and educational book.

   

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