In May 1919, mere months after the guns of World War I had fallen silent, the Russian Revolution was roaring and the Bolsheviks¹ Red Army had begun to take the upper hand against the U.S. and British-backed White Army. Paul Dukes?a 30-year-old concert pianist, master of disguise dubbed ³The Man with a Hundred Faces,² and the only English spy in Russia?was cut off in Petrograd after infiltrating the Bolshevik Government and stealing top-secret information. With the government in London desperately in need of the documents in Dukes¹ possession and the Bolshevik secret police closing in, a seemingly suicidal plan was hatched to rescue Dukes. 29-year-old naval lieutenant Gus Agar and his handpicked team of seven men boarded plywood boats?the fastest naval vessels in existence, most armed with only two machine guns and a single torpedo. They set out for the island fortress of Kronstadt, the most well-defended naval target in Russian, and into the jaws of the Soviet police. Written by a former MI6 officer in the tradition of Agent Zigzag, Operation Kronstadt is an extraordinarily gripping non- fiction thriller.

Ferguson, Harry