Moscow Nights

In 1965, Commander Courtney, MP for Harrow East, was involved in a scandal: compromising and explicit photos of him and a certain Russian woman had been disseminated amongst the British national press. Who had sent them - and why? For the British businessman plying his wares behind the Iron Curtain in the 1960s, life was a constant game of cat and mouse with the security services. Feared and loathed in equal measure, the KGB and the STASI were supreme practitioners of the art of espionage with a singularly dispassionate view of killing and a willingness to mete out the harshest punishments to those unfortunate enough to cross their path. It was against this backdrop that Adrian McIntyre carried out his business dealings in the USSR and Poland. Victim of a relentless campaign of sexual entrapment, poisoned and threatened at gunpoint, he relates his experiences with charm and humour, as the true nature of the difficulties he encountered unfolds to reveal the deft manoeuvring required to keep him one step ahead of a one-way ticket to the gulags, or worse. Moscow Nights is an enthralling and pacy account of business life during the Cold War; a period of deep mistrust, political intrigue and unexplained disappearances, which, hopefully, can now be consigned to the history books.