It’s 1985, and the Cold War is still going strong when an unexpected visitor shows up at the front gates of the American embassy in Rome. The cantankerous older man identifies himself as Vitaly Yurchenko, the deputy director of the KGB’s First Directorate. Yurchenko declares that he wants to defect.
Once the embassy employees recover from their shock, the federal agencies involved are practically giddy over the potential intelligence they might learn from this out-of-the-blue gift. They hope to gain information on a long list of topics: missile defense, surveillance operations, and undercover Soviet agents who might be working within American borders.
