The Sandbaggers - Season 3 (1980)

Neil Burnside wants to plant a sleeper agent, Anna Wiseman, in the USSR but doesn't want to tell the Deputy Chief Matthew Peele, her actual mission. Peele isn't prepared to sanction the mission, so Burnside decides to go ahead with the mission unofficially. The real mission is to embarrass the USSR on its human rights record and Burnside decides that the best way to do so is to create maximum publicity.

When word comes around that a former government employee in a top secret department is going to jump to the USSR with his Hungarian mistress, Willie Caine is sent to Prague to retrieve him.

When the SIS medical officer suggests that Neil Burnside is under stress and should be rested, Deputy Chief Matthew Peele sees his chance to replace him with the new Director of Intelligence, Paul Dalgetty. The final nail in Burnside's coffin seems to be a secret CIA assessment of the SIS where Burnside is described as a major negative influence. However, when Burnside confronts his CIA colleague Jeff Ross, he gets a different side of the story and goes on the attack.

At the SALT 3 talks in Valletta, Malta, Neil Burnside receives word from a KGB informant that he wants to defect, and Willie Caine is downed by a fatal sniper bullet.