Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The two men who got on that flight from Moscow to London were actually spies working for a foreign power. They were career officers with Russian military intelligence. Their real names were Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. They had come to London to murder someone.

#2 The GRU, by contrast, was global. It dealt with external threats. Its mandate was everywhere. The organization's activities ranged from traditional military deployments to coups and invasions. Its officers saw themselves as part of a glorious tradition stretching back to Russia's battles against Napoleon and Crimea.

#3 The two GRU agents went to visit the man they were sent to kill, Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, England. They spent a couple of hours there and went back to the hotel.

#4 After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Chekists were out. The elderly KGB plotters who carried out a coup in summer 1991 against Gorbachev found themselves under arrest. Democracy in the shape of Yeltsin seemed ascendant. But Putin had other plans for Russia.