Richard Sorge: The story of a formidable, Bond-like WWII Soviet spy: A new book on the life of World War II era Soviet spy Richard Sorge — Owen Matthews’ An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent — is the first to tell his story through previously classified intelligence archives, Victor Sebestyen writes for the Financial Times. The work is a fresh Bond-like memoir of one of the finest, most “impeccable” (alternatively dubbed “formidable”) agents in history. Arguably one of the most competent men of espionage to have ever lived, Sorge handed Joseph Stalin the detailed plan of Operation Barbarossa — Germany’s summer 1941 invasion of the USSR — but failed to maintain the dictator’s trust and ended up hanged in Japan for his spying.