SHADRIN: The Spy Who Never Came Back

The story of a Soviet defector who disappeared while working for the CIA--through, his wife charges, CIA connivance. Captain Nikolai Artamonov, at 27 the youngest destroyer captain in Soviet history, fell wildly in love with 20-year-old Polish dental student Ewa Cora. Artamonov's attentions overwhelmed the girl--but not so greatly that she would consider returning to the Soviet Union with him. Stewing on this, he decided that he really hated the USSR too, and so asked her to defect to the West with him. She abandoned her family, he abandoned his career; and they sought asylum in the US. After endless debriefing, his fortunes improved: renamed Shadrin, he worked as a consultant and analyst for the Office of Naval Intelligence, earned an engineering degree, and bought a country home; Ewa, meanwhile, went to dental college and entered private practice. Then Shadfin's contract was allowed to expire and he was offered a much lesser translator job with the Defense Intelligence Agency: had this downfall been engineered by the CIA, so he would accept their offer and become a double agent? For a year he resisted, and then what happened becomes foggy. Another defector, Igor Orlov, had lost his privileged status with the CIA, then been sent out as a double agent. But was he really a triple agent? Five years passed, Shadrin apparently became accepted by the KGB; and--this is the big charge--Orlov and the CIA decided to really lock Orlov's bona fides with the KGB by allowing Orlov to give Shadrin to the KGB in Vienna. . . fully aware that he was under a death sentence at home. Ewa has been stonewalled; Orlov has unimpeachable CIA credentials; Shadrin is either dead or in prison. A grim, grippingly told story, whatever its self-serving elements.