The Company

The Company is a three-part serial about the activities of the CIA during the Cold War. It was based on the best-selling 2002 novel of the same name by Robert Littell. The teleplay adaptation was written by Ken Nolan, who received a Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Long Form – Adapted. Synopsis In 1950, the best friends Jack McAuliffe, Leo Kritzky, and Yevgeny Tsipin graduate from Yale and prepare to go their separate ways; Jack and Leo are recruited to the CIA by Frank "The Wizard" Wisner, and Yevgeny goes home to Moscow, where he is recruited into the KGB by the spymaster Starik while he falls in love with Azalia Ivanova. In 1955, Jack has been assigned to Harvey "The Sorcerer" Torriti at a CIA station in East Berlin, where the East German defector Vishnevsky offers the identity of a mole in MI6 for safe passage to the West. At the CIA headquarters in Washington, counterintelligence chief James Jesus "Mother" Angleton begins Vishnevsky's exfiltration and tells his best friend and MI6 liaison, Adrian Philby. When the KGB and Berlin Police show up to the exfiltration instead of Vishnevsky, Torriti and Jack surmise that the blown defection is because of the mole. Angleton believes the fault lies with Berlin and infuriates Torriti, who aims to expose the mole by feeding him a barium meal: Torriti gives privileged information to a trusted contact in MI6, forcing the mole to protect himself by attempting to kill Torriti. Meanwhile, Jack is falling in love with his first asset, Lili, who provides information from an important scientist. When the barium meal sees Jack and Torriti ambushed at a meeting, Torriti prepares another.