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It had all the hallmarks of a set up. A Russian trade representative walks into London police station in the 1970s and claims to be a KGB officer.
The CIA and MI5 had been worried for a decade about such false approaches - designed to plant disinformation among western intelligence agencies.
But Oleg Lyalin was genuine - even if his motives were perhaps unusual.
Through his multiple love affairs, he'd woven a complicated web from which he wanted to escape.
Then came his drink-driving arrest, which proved the catalyst for his defection.
And that would lead to the sensational expulsion of over one-hundred Soviet officials.
Lyalin's story has been meticulously detailed by Richard Kerbaj in his new book The Defector.
He stumbled across the case while researching his 2022 book The Secret History of the Five Eyes.
