title: The Dangerous Otto Katz: The Many Lives of a Soviet Spy
author:  Jonathan Miles 
description: Shifting from a fine history of a painting (The Wreck of the Medusa, 2007), Miles depicts a high-profile publicist of the Communist Party line. Involved in books and movies in the 1930s and 1940s, Otto Katz also likely attempted to rub out former Russian spy Whittaker Chambers, but his Stalinist dedication was repaid in tragedy: after a show trial, Katz was executed in 1952 in Prague. Navigating in detail Katzs many clandestine guises, Miles detects the multilingual Czech in Communist and literary circles in 1920s Berlin. Following apparent recruitment by Soviet intelligence, Katz operated from Paris with another Soviet-controlled propagandist known to students of this subject (The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Mnzenberg, 2003, by Sean McMeekin), pumping out anti-Fascist and proPopular Front tracts under a string of aliases. So debonair was Katz he swept through Hollywood posing as a refugee from Nazidom. Touching on famous stage names with which Katzs agitprop career intersected (Nol Coward, Marlene Dietrich, Lillian Hellman), Miles book may appeal to culture mavens as well as those interested in espionage. --Gilbert Taylor
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  ROGUE AGENT
  
    
  
  By Don Pendleton
  
    
  
  PROLOGUE
  
    
  
  The jeep's bright headlights sliced through the crisp winter night and framed
  a guarded gate in their harsh glare. Mikhail Dorsakov saw the two sentries and
  promptly eased his foot off the gas pedal. He raised his head high enough to
  check on his fake mustache and beard in the rear-view mirror, then quickly
  turned up the collar of his heavy coat so it partially hid his face.
  
    
  
  Both young guards were inside a simple shack, huddled in front of a portable
  heater that rested on a small table. When the headlights bathed them, they
  grabbed their weapons and rushed outside. They had their subguns in hand and
  were looking properly official by the time the jeep crunched to a stop in the
  snow.
  
    
  
  Dorsakov slowly rolled down his window. He saw one of the pair glance at the
  markings on his vehicle. The sentry stiffened, poked his companion, and they
  snapped to attention.
  
    
  
  "We were not told to expect anyone t