The Good Spy

When the words ``WELCOME BACK, IGOR'' flash across his computer screen, Klaus Becker--successful American computer entrepreneur and reluctant Soviet ``sleeper'' agent--is ``awakened'' by his KGB masters after nearly two decades spent undercover. But Becker, who fled to America in the aftermath of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, has never been actively engaged in espionage and wants no part of it now. An attempt to defect to the FBI turns sour when the CIA, seeking the identity of a recently discovered mole in the intelligence community, steps into the picture and tries to make Becker a double agent. An internal power struggle between local KGB operatives only increases the pressure on Becker, who, it turns out, is not without resources of his own. Griffiths ( The Memory Man ) has produced an espionage thriller with a twist, a story whose ultimate concern is the individual victims caught in the web, rather than the amoral nationalistic spiders who spin it. (Jan.)