Red Traitor, Matthews - B +

                This is the second book in a series featuring a KGB colonel in the midst of potentially catastrophic events. Previously, we visited a thermonuclear testing facility, and this time we are in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis. As the author is a historian turned thriller writer, the novel is very factual and informative. The focus is on Col. Vasin, a fictional KGB officer, working to find the GRU officer feeding info to the US, and Captain Vasily Arkhipov, an actual Soviet Naval officer who likely stopped nuclear armageddon in Oct. 1962. Vasin tracks down a Soviet working for the US.  (There actually was a highly placed officer sharing information with the US who was picked up just after the crisis. He received his proverbial ounce of lead the following May.) Arkhipov is one hell of a story. He was on the first Soviet nuclear powered sub the year before when K-19 took its trial runs in the N. Atlantic. The sub was off the Greenland coast when the reactor overheated. Over a dozen men died cooling it down, and Arkhipov spent a year receiving medical treatment. He was the commander of the four diesel powered sub flotilla sent to Cuba the following fall. The subs were armed with nuclear torpedoes. When the US Navy harassed them, he opted to surface and ask Moscow for instructions rather than fire the torpedoes. After the collapse of the USSR, his wife told interviewers that he had seen the consequences of nuclear radiation in person and could not authorize the use of the weapon. Per the author, there is a conference room at Langley named for Arkhipov, who many believe stopped the world from going over the precipice.