Tonge, David S. The Kremlin's Confidant. How a British Naval Officer Suspended the Cold War

This biography describes how a British naval officer became a Kremlin favourite and CIA target as Gorbachevs Kremlin decided to open the Soviet economy to the west. In 1985, Moscow reached out to Martin Packard, a retired British naval commander. He was promised unrivalled access to the hidden riches of the Soviet Empire with a cornucopia spread before him as he travelled this long closed land from the Baltic to the Bering Sea.

A harbinger of the technology and foreign exchange needed to halt the Soviet decline, to some Russians he was the most important foreign businessman in the Soviet Union. But, as the Communist Party imploded, this previously-undescribed offer turned into a Faustian bargain, and his life became a captivating saga of rags-to-riches-to-rags.

This book describes his rise, the details of his freelancing for Gorbachev - and his fall.

A former intelligence analyst at the British Mediterranean command in Malta, Packards role as Scarlet Pimpernel of the Greek Colonels saw him forced out of the Royal Navy. He then became one of the largest jeans manufacturers in Europe. In this capacity, the insiders of Gorbachevs perestroika identified him to help them lift the life of the Soviet peoples, an unlikely partnership of the Kremlin and a quintessential Briton, a scion of Empire, Church and Navy, but a non-conformist in every sense.

It is a political tale, where Packard clashes with the British Foreign Office and the CIA in Cyprus and the Colonels Greece. Forced out of the Navy, he heads the English Cell of the Greek resistance, shipping printing presses, passports and petards across Europe to Athens. He then becomes an intimate of the wayward but brilliant Dom Mintoff and survives a mysterious poison attempt by Erica at a Moscow airport.

It is also a deeply human tale, of a charismatic figure who rose so high, mingled with the mighty of East and West, and then lost it all.