The Skripal Files: The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy

by Mark Urban

Overview

The explosive story of the poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and what it reveals about the growing clandestine conflict between the West and Russia

Salisbury, England: March 4, 2018.

Slumped on a bench, paralyzed and barely able to breathe, were a former Russian intelligence officer named Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. Sergei had been living a quiet life in England since 2010, when he was expelled from Russia as part of a spy swap; he had been serving a lengthy prison sentence for working secretly for the British intelligence agency MI6. On this Sunday afternoon, he and his daughter had just finished lunch at a local restaurant when they started to feel faint. Within minutes they were close to death.

The Skripals had been poisoned, not with a familiar toxin but with Novichok, a deadly nerve agent developed in southern Russia. Was this a message from the Kremlin that traitors would not escape violent death, even on British soil? As Sergei and Yulia fought for their lives, and the British government and their allies sought answers, relations between the West and Russia descended to a new low.

The Skripal Files is a remarkable and definitive account of Sergei Skripal’s story, which lays bare the new spy war between Russia and the West. Mark Urban, the diplomatic and defense editor for the BBC, met with Skripal in the months before his poisoning, learning about his career in Russian military intelligence, how he became a British agent, his imprisonment in Russia, and the events that led to his release. Skripal’s first-hand accounts and experiences reveal the high stakes of a new spy game that harks back to the chilliest days of the Cold War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250207722
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	311
Sales rank:	447,163
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Mark Urban is Diplomatic and Defense Editor of the BBC’s Newsnight. He has covered many of the world’s conflicts during the past twenty-five years, including the Iraq campaign that began in 2003. He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

Prologue: An Unlawful Use of Force 1

Part One: Agent
The Pitch 7
Sergei’s Journey 13
Into the Darkness 24
Master Race No Longer 41
Breakthrough in Madrid 56
Inside the Glass House 70
The View from Vauxhall 85
Back into the Light 99

Part Two: Prisoner
Inside Lefortovo 115
Litvinenko 129 11. IK 5 138
Hitmen 147
The Fateful Letter 160
Operation Ghost Stories 173
Deliverance 185
Christie Miller Road 198

Part Three: Target
Sunday 4 March 213
The Fight for Survival 225
‘Highly Likely’ Russia 234
The Investigation Falters 254
The Information War 270
The Long Road to Recovery 286

Index 301

Editorial Reviews

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Sunday Times

“A scrupulous piece of reporting, necessary, timely and very sobering.”—John Le Carré

“BBC journalist Mark Urban lays out Skripal’s life and career as a double agent in an account that reads as if it were ripped from a Cold War spy novel.”—TIME

“An . . . engrossing, topical book. . . . Urban tells the story of Skripal’s undercover career well, much of it previously unknown and gleaned from around 10 hours of conversations with him at his Salisbury home. . . . The Skripal Files is a compelling first instalment of a story that will continue.”—The Guardian

“Fascinating account of the poisoning case. . . . Other books will follow on the Skripals, but they will struggle to match the texture of Urban's research, its knowledgeable hinterland.”—The Times

“Urban takes us on an expert tour of the psychological consequences for an individual who has betrayed his country. . . . The Skripal Files offers a genuinely rounded perspective on the human costs and consequences of betraying the Russian state as well as the deadly artistry of Russia’s active measures program.”—War on the Rocks

“A gripping real-life spy thriller.”—The Cipher Brief

“An original and often fascinating read on the games that spies played in the wake of the Cold War.”—Sunday Times

From the Publisher