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perhaps to our image of invulnerability, then maybe it is time for bygones to be bygones. Outsiders may ogle her lightly clad figure, but must be resigned to the fact that her most interesting feature – her career in intelligence – is forever cloaked in shadow. Moreover, that someone who embodies superficiality rather than achievement has become a female role model speaks volumes about Russian femininity. Ms Chapman also embodies the contradiction between the regime’s xenophobic attitude to the West in general, and its senior members’ personal enjoyment of foreign fleshpots. As the journalist Ms Latynina notes caustically: ‘This great heroine of the Putin youth was crying, crying buckets when she was told she was going to be banned from Great Britain.’
    Sleazy and sex-crazed, crass yet sinister, xenophobic yet obsessed with the West, an artificial creation of an ailing regime: Ms Chapman is emblematic of the country that recruited, ran and promoted her. She exemplifies too the threats and the failings of Russian intelligence: nepotistic in recruitment, with an increasingly blurred line between the professional and private duties of its officers, but still able to plant undetectable and effective agents in our midst.
    I have explained Russia’s motivation for spying, how it spies, and why we should mind. The next section of the book looks at the history of Western espionage efforts against Russia. Despite some occasional successes, these have in many respects been feebly focused and disastrously executed, something of which British and other Western taxpayers are largely unaware. The biggest losers in this saga of fiascos have been not the Western spymasters and their staff, but the locals who trusted them. This section also sets the scene for the final part of the book, looking at one of the most serious and damaging episodes in recent years: the case of the Estonian Hermann Simm. In both the Western bungles and Russian triumphs, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania play a central role. Too small to be able to determine their own destiny, an they are also too important for outsiders to ignore. That has been a fateful combination: both Russia and the West have tussled for influence in the Baltic region and states, and used them as springboards for espionage efforts elsewhere.

11
    The Traitor’s Tale
    In the chaotic conditions of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990 s, Herman Simm was a reassuringly solid figure. In January 1967 he had taken the standard pledge of the Soviet police force, ‘I, a citizen of the USSR, hereby taking the oath of the Soviet Militsiya , do solemnly swear that I will serve faithfully to the end the Soviet people, Soviet homeland and Soviet government.’ Since then he had a stellar record of competence and hard work. He had forty-four awards, including three medals for exemplary behaviour. At a time when brusque Soviet official manners still plagued public service, he was polite and pleasant. As well as Estonian and Russian, he spoke excellent German with smatterings of other languages. Unlike many officials from the old days, he counted as a patriot. As head of security at Toompea Castle, the country’s seat of government, he had masterminded its defence against an assault by pro-Kremlin demonstrators on 15 May 1990 – the closest Estonia came to an armed clash during its struggle to regain independence. By his account, if the defence failed he stood ready to escort the country’s then prime minister, Edgar Savisaar, through a secret tunnel to the town below, where a speedboat would whisk him to safety in Finland. Later he claims to have ferried Estonia’s hard-currency reserves in suitcases to safety in Helsinki for the nascent central bank, forestalling a possible Soviet attempt to seize them. 1
    After independence was restored in August 1991 Simm moved onwards and upwards, becoming in early 1993 the regional police