Vincent V. Severski: “Niepokorni” (The Defiant; vol. 4 of the “Nielegalni” series)

Work

The Polish Literary Bibliography (PBL) records the first edition of 2016 with the subject headings Polish intelligence and Russian intelligence. According to the publisher’s description, Sara and Konrad, after the exfiltration of Mikhail Popovsky from Russia, return home and learn that Department Q has been disbanded. Europe faces a political coup whose authors want to change the global balance of power; without state backing, the protagonists gather what is left of the department for one last mission.^1,2

The real background

Spiriting a compromised or endangered collaborator out of an adversary’s country is what the glossary calls exfiltration. The best-known example with a Polish dimension is described on the “Jack Strong” card: on the night of 7–8 November 1981 CIA officers took Col. Ryszard Kukliński out of Poland with his wife and sons.³

In the series Popovsky is the head of the Polish section of Russian intelligence who goes over to the other side – a defector figure.⁴

What is true and what is invented

The publisher’s description does not link the plot to any real event; the conspiracy and the disbanding of the department are fiction. The Act on the Internal Security Agency and the Foreign Intelligence Agency does not describe the internal structure of the Foreign Intelligence Agency, so no real counterpart of Department Q can be identified.^1,5