A sailor artist lawyer & writer fluent in many languages Bystrolyotov was one of a team of outstanding Soviet spies operating in Western countries between the world wars. He was a dashing man whose Modus Operandi was the seduction of women
- among them a French embassy employee the wife of a British official & a disfigured Gestapo officer. He stole military secrets from Nazi Germany Fascist Italy & enabled Stalin to look into the diplomatic pouches of many European countries. Idealistically committed to the Motherland he showed extraordinary courage & physical prowess
- twice crossing the Sahara Desert & the jungles of the Congo. But in 1938 at the height of Stalins purges Bystrolyotov was arrested & tortured. Sentenced to twenty years of hard labour in the Gulag he risked more severe punishment by documenting the regimes crimes against humanity. With amazing stamina he survived the repression & came to realise the true nature of the ideology he once served unquestioningly.