Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy, Macintyre - B

       Ursula Kuczynski, born in 1907 to a wealthy Berlin Jewish family, became a communist as a teenager. She was naturally rebellious, active, passionate and altruistic. As the Depression rolled over Germany, her husband was offered a job in Shanghai and she went east in 1930. She was recruited by Moscow; her job was to befriend the German ex-pat community and report any and all information. She was sent to Moscow for training and then, back east, this time to Mukden in Manchuria. Now known as Sonya, she supported CCP partisans attacking the Japanese. When someone in her network was blown, she was recalled and sent to Warsaw. She was awarded the Order of The Red Banner for her success and courage. Before the war broke out, she moved to Switzerland, where she married for a second time to a fellow Soviet agent, and together they moved to England near the UK Atomic Research Centre. There, she met another German communist, Klaus Fuchs and became his handler. He never understood why the US and Britain didn't share their secret with their Soviet ally. He passed on an atomic treasure trove that allowed the USSR to eventually build its bomb. While Sonya raised children and passed as a completely domestic homemaker, she also ran a network in the UK and soon, MI-5 was interested. When Fuchs was sent to America, she passed him off to a new handler. She co-opted an OSS effort to such an extent that all of their German agents returned home to Germany late in the war were actually communists reporting to her. When Klaus Fuchs confessed after the war, she knew her time was up, and notwithstanding innumerable and obvious connections to him and the deep suspicion of some in MI-5, she left for East Germany in 1950. She lived in Berlin until her death in 2000. As she aged, she was rewarded with honors, a second Red Banner, and published her memoirs. She even toured Britain. She lost her faith in the USSR, but not the core principles of communism.