Heavy Reading

Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky’s KGB: The Inside Story, which was published last month and excerpted in TIME, has claimed a high-ranking victim. Latvia’s Deputy Foreign Minister N.V. Neyland quietly resigned; the book charges that he was a Swedish-speaking KGB agent assigned to recruit Sweden’s Prime Minister Olaf Palme. Neyland came from the same hometown as Palme’s mother and apparently used his acquaintance with her to work his way toward the P.M. After gaining access to Palme, Neyland persuaded the KGB that he was responsible for some of the pro-Soviet views held by the Prime Minister, who was assassinated in 1986.