The Mercenary

Written by Paul Vidich

Narrated by Jeff Harding

Moscow, 1985. The Soviet Union and its communist regime are in the last stages of decline, but remain opaque to the rest of the world—and still very dangerous. In this ever-shifting landscape, a senior KGB officer—code name GAMBIT—has approached the CIA Moscow Station chief with top secret military weapons intelligence and asked to be exfiltrated. GAMBIT demands that his handler be a former CIA officer, Alex Garin, a former KGB officer who defected to the American side.



The CIA had never successfully exfiltrated a KGB officer from Moscow, and the top brass do not trust Garin. But they have no other options: GAMBIT's secrets could be the deciding factor in the Cold War.



Garin is able to gain the trust of GAMBIT, but remains an enigma. Is he a mercenary acting in self-interest or are there deeper secrets from his past that would explain where his loyalties truly lie? As the date nears for GAMBIT's exfiltration, and with the walls closing in on both of them, Garin begins a relationship with a Russian agent and sets into motion a plan that could compromise everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Mar 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798765021965

Paul Vidich

Paul Vidich has had a distinguished career in music and media. Most recently, he served as Special Advisor to AOL and was Executive Vice President at the Warner Music Group, in charge of technology and global strategy. He serves on the Board of Directors of Poets & Writers and The New School for Social Research. A founder and publisher of the Storyville App, Vidich is also an award-winning author of short fiction. His novels, An Honorable Man, The Good Assassin, The Coldest Warrior and The Mercenary,are available from No Exit Press.

Reviews for The Mercenary

[timbazzett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you are a devotee of John le Carre's spy-thrillers, featuring George Smiley of British Intelligence, then you will love the work of American Paul Vidich, a relative newcomer to the espionage genre. He even has a Smiley-like character in his George Mueller, who has appeared in major or minor roles in all four of his novels - AN HONORABLE MAN, THE GOOD ASSASSIN, THE COLDEST WARRIOR, and now, his latest, THE MERCENARY. Mueller, a veteran of WWII and the OSS, is now a seasoned senior CIA agent, who contracts former double agent Alek Garin to go into Moscow and bring out a KGB defector who holds valuable tech secrets. It is 1985, just before the detente between the U.S. and the USSR. There is distrust and danger, entrapment and escape, torture and intrigue, and even a little romance. It's all in here, and in the most literary and nail-biting fashion imaginable. Garin is a marvelous character, with a suitably shadowy past and scars both physical and emotional, but he knows spycraft. And Mueller is here too, watching and waiting. I have loved the work of Graham Greene, Ward Just and le Carre for years, and have sampled some Eric Ambler too. Well, I'm adding Paul Vidich to that honor roll of masters of spy fiction. He is that good. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA