World: Episodes in a Looking-Glass War

Soviet and U.S. spies expose each other's capers

The short, slick spy thriller had been written to order by Russia's famed detective novelist, Julian Semyonov—the Soviet Ian Fleming. Spread over five columns of Izvestiya last week, it had some of the suspense but none of the humor of a James Bond story. The tale began as Martha Peterson, 32, a tall, blonde vice consul in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, drove her car to a deserted street in the Soviet capital. Quickly changing from a white dress to a black outfit that would meld...

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