Viktor Suvorov takes us inside the Aquarium, Moscow headquarters of the GRU, the super-secret Russian military intelligence organization and rival of the KGB. It is here that agents are brought to be trained, disciplined, and when necessary, broken.
In shocking fashion, Suvorov recounts the first day of training when he is forced to watch a film that shows a disaffected GRU agent being burned alive. This is how the GRU reveals to its trainees that there is only one way out of the organization โ death. Other GRU methods are as physically torturous as the viewing of that film is terrifying: electric shocks used to punish a failure of memory; being pushed off a speeding train; hand-to-hand combat with death row prisoners recruited for their viciousness. All are employed in the training of a top agent.
It is the agent's job โ once he is in the field โ to gather information in any way he can. No source of information is too small or too banal. Agents of the GRU are said to have attended every exhibition on the planet in the last fifty years โ from exhibits of military electronics and tanks to cats and flowers, with one of their most successful missions carried out at an exhibition of Chinese goldfish. Above all else, loyalty to the GRU is stressed. Agents are to trust no one and to be prepared to take even the life of a best friend for an act against the GRU. Gradually, Suvorov became disillusioned with the GRU, and it was when he was forced to betray one of his best friends that he made up his mind to defect.