Leningrad, summer 1968. Volodya is 15-year-old. With his mates, he goes to the cinema to catch The Shield and the Sword, the new movie everyone in the USSR is buzzing about. It’s a big-budget production about a Soviet spy who infiltrates the Nazis during World War II. Volodya is blown away.
‘I am going to be a spy,’ he decides right there and then. He’s so determined he pays a visit to the KGB headquarters in Leningrad, a bleak office building known to everyone in town as the Big House. He walks up to an officer on duty and says, ‘I want to get a job with you.’
‘That’s terrific, but there are several problems,’ replies the officer. ‘First, we don’t take people who come to us on their own initiative. Second, you can come to us only after the army or after some type of civilian higher education.’
Volodya doesn’t miss a beat.
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