Read the excerpt from the dark game: true spy stories from invisible ink to cia moles. tension between the two sides escalated until june 1948, when the soviets blocked all western access to the capital. in this first real crisis of the cold war, the west was not going to be denied by the soviets. if the underlined word were replaced with the word "event,” the tone of the excerpt would be more resentful. more intellectual. less intense. less objective.