Okay, get this. In today’s Wall Street Journal, we read:
Federal prosecutors alleged 11 people were spies living secret lives in American communities, from Seattle to Washington D.C., sent years ago to infiltrate U.S. society and glean its secrets.
In an extensive and bizarre affidavit whose details echoed Cold War spy thrillers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation claimed the alleged spies were sent here by the Russian overseas intelligence service known as the SVR—the successor to the Soviet KGB—as early as the mid-1990s, and were provided with training in language as well as the use of codes and ciphers.
Well, sure, easy to say the story “echoed Cold War spy thrillers,” but the least they could do is mention that it echoes my Cold War spy thriller, to wit “Sleeping With My Assassin,” the story that appears in Otto Penzler’s excellent new collection Agents of Treachery.
The story involves a group of sleeper saboteurs sent over to the US on a long term mission – and then abandoned after the Berlin Wall fell. Now, mysteriously, they’ve been reactivated but by whom and for what? And what’s it mean for our main character who is haunted by fond dreams of an all-American childhood…?
The collection would be worth reading, truly, even if it didn’t predict the future. But I’m just saying…
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s funny because that is exactly what I thought of when the news broke.
Your story was really good and as I read it I kept wondering what if ???
I THOUGHT that story looked familiar, then remembered a little series I saw on PBS in the ’90’s called “Sleepers”:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101200/
“Everything old is new again.”