Ben Macintyre's Redwood traces a KGB defection in revolutionary Iran
A KGB officer who offered to trade Soviet secrets for medical help sits at the centre of Redwood, Ben Macintyre's book about Cold War espionage and defection. The publisher describes its central figure as a mysterious double agent known to MI6 as "Redwood" who revealed a Kremlin secret Penguin.
The officer is Vladimir Kuzichkin. He served as a KGB officer, meaning an officer of the Soviet security service, and offered to betray Soviet and Iranian-allied secrets The Guardian. He wanted out. In the book's opening scene, he asks a British doctor for help to have sex again in exchange for betrayal.
The story is set in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 revolution that brought Iran's ayatollahs to power. Kuzichkin's task in Tehran was to distribute money, arms and encouragement to the Tudeh party, an orthodox communist organisation. That party was led by a Stalinist who had spent the previous decades in exile in East Germany.
Into the same city comes Ian McCredie. He was a young MI6 operative, meaning an officer of Britain's foreign intelligence service, who arrived in Tehran with a wife and baby to re-establish a British intelligence presence. The relationship between Kuzichkin and McCredie becomes one of double agent and handler, meaning a secret source run by an intelligence officer.
Kuzichkin was later exfiltrated to the United Kingdom, meaning smuggled out by intelligence officers. His controllers then sent him to Pakistan to share intelligence about communists with the Iranian authorities.
Macintyre frames such betrayals through MICE, meaning Money, Ideology, Coercion or Ego as reasons people betray their countries. Macintyre previously wrote Operation Mincemeat, which became a West End and Broadway musical. His publisher biography describes him as a multimillion-copy bestselling author, and lists his books as including Colditz, Agent Sonya, SAS: Rogue Heroes, The Spy and the Traitor, and Agent Zigzag.
What makes this stand out for readers following the book trade is the cluster of coverage across markets in one week. The Telegraph gave Redwood a 4-star review and described it as focusing on a Cold War intrigue that helped avert a major conflict The Telegraph. The Wall Street Journal described it as telling the story of "the Cold War's most extraordinary spy" The Wall Street Journal. The New York Times published a review titled "Book Review: 'Redwood,' Ben Macintyre" The New York Times. The Guardian published its review on 16 September 2026.
