People have asked me why I chose to write "Red to Black" as a novel when I had so much hard information about the reality of Putin¡¯s Russia. 

           Red to Black, which is being published by Ecco Press/Harper Collins this fall, is fiction - "a brilliant and unforgettable novel", as Stephen Fry reviewed the book.  And he added, "(Red to Black) ...has told me more about the making of modern Russia than I could learn from all books of journalism and contemporary history combined". 

            Ed Lucas, Central and East European correspondent for The Economist concurred. "Red to Black is insightful and absorbing.  The book exposes Kremlin economic subversion of the west.  It may read like a novel, but it is far more informative than factual writers would dare to be".

            Other reviewers of the book have also pointed out this aspect of Red to Black. 

            Working on the spot as the Soviet Union collapsed and for more than fifteen years afterwards, I knew that much of the information that came to me in that time was explosive, dangerous to possess, and would make an excellent basis for a non-fiction account of modern Russia.

            In 1989, shortly after I went to live in the Republic of Georgia, the Berlin Wall fell, swiftly followed by the implosion of the Soviet Union.  It was an opportune moment to arrive.  I reported these events as they happened as well as performing an intelligence role. 

            It's easy to forget now that the end of the Soviet Union took everyone by surprise.  The CIA was looking far into the future for such an event and British intelligence agreed.  The scramble in the West to comprehend what was happening and what would unfold was as ad hoc as the events themselves seemed to be.  I met and interviewed the new leaders in the liberated Soviet republics -- both in politics, business and the security services -- before moving to Moscow.

            The so-called dawn of democracy in Russia was greeted in the West with relief and euphoria.  Western leaders in particular expected a seamless transition from Communism to a modern capitalist economy and saw the Russians as a new market and their country as a valuable source of raw materials -- oil, natural gas and metals.  George W. Bush and Tony Blair uncritically welcomed Vladimir Putin to the presidency in 2000, without taking into account that he was formerly head of the FSB (KGB) and only the second Russian leader since the Revolution in 1918 to hold both positions.

            For those who'd experienced the dark days of the Cold War, a new era had begun when the world would no longer be polarized between two nuclear-armed and mutually hostile powers. 

            But the relief and euphoria came from what I and others believed was a willful blindness to what was actually happening behind the eye-catching events.  This assessment has proved accurate.  Ten years after the Berlin Wall fell, the KGB was back in power, but this time it was more powerful than ever.  Now there was no Communist Party or Politburo to keep the spies in check.  Today, in fact, the KGB is more powerful than it has ever been, and has greater financial resources than any security service in the world.  The KGB today is the state and vice versa.

            In the years between 1989-2004, my work charted the rise and fall of democracy in Russia and the internecine wars between Russia's powerbrokers --the mafias, oligarchs and Intelligence tsars who fought to influence two presidents and then appoint a third, Vladimir Putin.   Collecting material from this period, my intention was always to write a non-fiction account of this tumultuous time in history.

            But a non-fiction account of these years had many pitfalls, aside from any intelligence considerations.

            Since Putin became head of the FSB (KGB) in 1998, over sixty journalists have been murdered in Russia, and thirty politicians.  They have contracted mysterious radioactive illnesses like the one that killed former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, in London.  They have been the victims of gun assassinations or other forms of violent death.  And this number of murders does not include the deaths of journalists deliberately run down by Russian military vehicles in the Chechen war or killed by similar "accidents".  Nor does it include the murders of westerners that have never been reported in the media.

            Western journalists have routinely put these murders down to the Russian mafia.  But as one of my sources, a senior FSB officer, says, "There is no clear line between the mafia and the intelligence services in Russia.  Money or protection moves from one side to the other.  In other cases (these murders) are simply a lone FSB act, following orders from the Kremlin siloviki (men of power)."

            At the same time as the Russian mafia/Intelligence agencies murder individuals that cause trouble, the Kremlin and its business allies lean on the Western media in two ways.  Firstly, they use the threat of legal action -- backed by limitless funds -- to prevent news stories unfavourable to them.  Second, big business backed by the Kremlin subtly buys influence in some prominent Western newspapers by investing in sponsored articles and even -- as with the London Evening Standard newspaper -- buying the paper itself.

            The Kremlin and its allies under Putin do not want uncomfortable truths to be published and they go to any lengths to prevent that happening.  It would be a brave -- or foolish -- publisher who went up against these forces and the financial support of the Russian state that backs them.

            Consequently, three years ago I reached the conclusion that fiction was the best approach in writing about Putin's Russia.  Fiction seemed the only way to convey the truth in publishable form. That was the beginning of Red to Black.

             The story of Red to Black is, to some extent, my own story, interwoven with many fictionalised individuals and situations from the period.  It is the story of how the West, diverted by its War on Terror, failed to notice the rise of Russia as a KGB mafia state. 

            Back in the early Nineties, CIA and MI6 intelligence officers fraternised with KGB officers for the first time since the Cold War began.  Today, orders from Washington and London have long since put an end to any kind of liaison between the two sides.  As Tony Blair put it -- though rather too late and after the Russian desk at MI6 had been reduced to a fraction of its former strength - Russia is now the chief security threat to the West after al Qaeda and Iran.  

            There are now more KGB officers in London than at any time since the Cold War began.  The same is true in America.  As one MI6 acquaintance put it recently.  "The Russian security services are rampant in Europe.  They're over-running us". 

            So Red to Black, while principally a novel, is also an account of much that has never been written about modern Russia.

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