The Blind Spy

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LIEUTENANT VALENTIN VIKTOROV WALKED carefully and with evident hesitation through the labyrinth of Aleppo’s covered souk. He might have seemed lost to those moving past him quickly on their errands. But, lost or not, it was clear that he had his mind on things other than his surroundings.

He was a tall man with short-cropped fair hair and an athletic build. His face was so finely shaven, his skin so smooth, that he looked almost too young to be shaving at all. He certainly looked far younger than his twenty-seven years, and gave off an appearance of a young Russian army conscript on leave, rather than the seasoned KGB intelligence officer that he was.

Despite the fact that he was not on official assignment this summer morning, he was operating as he always did for KGB undercover work when he was outside the secret, protected spaces of the Soviet spy elite, places like the embassy compound in Damascus from which he had set off before the sun came up. He carried no identification from the embassy that would get him out of trouble if that was what he was heading into. If anything went wrong, he was unprotected.

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