Running Blind (Desmond Bagley novel)

Plot introduction

Ex-MI-6 spy Alan Stewart is coerced by his former masters to undertake a very simple final mission – to deliver a small parcel to a man in Iceland. The mission should be simple for Stewart, as he happens to be fluent in Icelandic, and has an Icelandic girlfriend.

However, immediately things go very wrong, very quickly. Soon after arrival, he is forced to kill a KGB agent who tried to take the package from him. When he tries to deliver the parcel, he realizes that he has been double-crossed, and that his former boss is now a double agent. Stewart sets off on a desperate race overland across some of the world’s most rugged, desolate and dramatic scenery, pursued by the KGB, the CIA, and his own people, who now think that he has become a traitor. The secret is with the mysterious parcel – and the opposition is more than willing to kill him to prevent him from discovering what that secret is.

Television series

In 1979 the BBC aired a three part espionage thriller with the same title based on the novel, starring Stuart Wilson, Ragnheiður Steindórsdóttir, George Sewell and Vladek Sheybal. It was made by BBC Scotland and largely filmed on location in Iceland. Thirty years later, copies of the video were changing hands for US$1,000.00.