Last weekend, I watched a funny comedy on Netflix, about two spies - a couple - who every couple of minutes were actively fighting for their life, juggling two or more weapons while hitting hard the many enemies in the most sensitive places. Surviving with a big smile on their face. What a life!
Spies, as well as diplomats, are often associated with glamour, action and adrenaline-driven daily tasks. In reality, most part of the job, in both cases, has to do more with office jobs, reading and interpreting incessantly, waiting, a lot of waiting for the right moment or message.
Martha D. Peterson, the author of The Widow Spy, was among the first female CIA case officers assigned in Moscow in the 1970s, at the peak of Cold War tensions. She joined the Agency after her husband, a CIA operative, died in a helicopter crash in Laos. Involved in a defection of a Soviet diplomat - codenamed: Trigon - she was caught while recovering the secret messages left in Moscow and shortly imprisoned to Lublianka.
As a woman, in the CIA, working under cover, being a spy was a permanent work of proving herself. Which at least in relationship with her mission, helped her as she was able to due her assignment without being taken seriously by KGB. Although the facts she shared, important testimonies about the state of the arts for female spies in the 1970s is very relevant for the case for women in intelligence.
The book has plenty of facts, important for the historian as well as anyone passionate about the Cold War, but it also shares an important episode of women´s history, from the most unexpected place.
Rating: 4 stars
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