Queen & Country: Declassified (2002) 1

Queen & Country: Declassified (2002) 1

Nov 2002

Operation: Landslide (Part 1)

by Greg Rucka, Brian Hurtt, John Dranski

Minder Three Paul Crocker returned empty handed (but alive) from East to West Berlin, in 1986. He was stopped at the border by the KGB but then allowed to pass through. Minder One Lindsay Mills didn’t make it back from a mission in Ukraine. Crocker was home for less than a day when he was sent back out on a mission to Czechoslovakia to pick up a KGB agent who wanted to defect.

James Wason, Crocker’s boss, advised him to be extremely cautious, given the state of affairs, including the death of Mills. A Russian KGB agent who stopped Crocker at the border had the would-be defector, Valery Karpin, in Prague, under surveillance.

Thoughts

I read this story once before, in Apr 2012. I don’t have any strong memories of it. I didn't take any notes. According to my records I bought it in Nov 2011 at Barbarian. 

I'm not crazy about the covers to this three-part story but they were done by an artist other than the one who drew the story itself.

Brian Hurtt was also the artist for the second arc of Queen & Country (Operation: Morning Star).

Excellent start. Great cliffhanger. Crocker knows that he needs to be on his toes but he doesn’t know about the KGB agent whom he met in East Berlin. I know that Crocker will survive the story because he was in Queen & Country stories set in the early 2000s but I don’t know how he will survive.