Restless

This is the last book I've just read.
I've written a summary but it's too long. Sorry about that.

I had never  read a book about spies. This book, in my opinion, tells us about how important were the Secret Services at the beginning of the Second War World, which members were hidden in newspapers, radio stations or the most unexpected places, in order to make governments and countries take important and transcendental actions by publishing or broadcasting false news.

Everything starts when Eva Delectorskaya, a beautiful 28-year-old Russian woman, is recruited by a mysterious man, Lucas Romer, who belongs to the British Secret Service (BSC). At first she does not want to accept but in the end he strikes her a chord by telling her that his brother, Kolia, who belongs to the BSC too, has just died in an important mission. Eva accepts to be enrolled in the BSC because she thinks that this will be a perfect way to revenge his death.

Eva is hard trained, she is very clever and can speak three languages and, after a short training time, she becomes a master of all spy tricks. Romer is very proud of her so she soon starts working for a BSC false broadcasting company in Belgium as a journalist.

After several successful missions in different countries, Eva is sent to the USA, which were not involved in the Second World War yet, to fulfill what, in Romer’s words, ‘was going to be her most difficult and important mission’. Eva’s work consists in trying to give, through different couriers, a new distribution of South America’s territories map which has been drawn by the Germans to the President of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt in order to make the USA feel threatened by the belief that the Germans were going to take over South America and, in this way, make them involved in the war and help the other allies to beat the German Army.

Eva is about to be killed. At first he doesn’t know what has happened but little by little she puts things together and with the help of some BSC friends she finds out some evidences that point out that Romer, who is her boss and lover, turns out to be a Russian agent.

Eva flees. From now on Eva’s life is restless. She is always looking at her back looking for shadows, trying to hide her identity, going here and there. Finally she goes to Ireland where he meets her husband, rebuilds her life and starts to plan her revenge.

Eva has a daughter, Ruth. When she is a grown up Eva, who is now in her seventies, explains Ruth about her life. Firstly Ruth doesn’t believe anything but in the end, her mother gives her a manuscript which contains her whole secret life in detail.

Ruth finds Romer’s address, now Lord Mansfield, following her mother pieces of advice and they both go there together in the middle of a dark night. When Romer sees Eva, he doesn’t show any gesture of surprise and he even threats Eva by telling her  that she is still a traitor to her country. Despite of feeling threatened by him Eva knows that Romer feels defeated. He has a good position in the British Society and now Eva was going to tell everybody that he was a traitor and a Russian spy. Romer feels the pressure on his shoulders and that very night he commits suicide.

I have found this book very interesting because I have learnt how important decisions can be influenced by the actions of cunning spies and consequently how much power they had. I think that now things have no changed too much. They are even more powerful due to the development of electronic devices that allow them to get inside the entanglement of Governments’ structures.