The book is a documentary story about the life and activities of one of the most secret people in our country in 1930–1950, an illegal intelligence officer who became the head of the illegal Soviet foreign intelligence service, General Alexander Korotkov. The reader learns about the confrontation between the Soviet and Nazi intelligence services, their structure in different years, about the tragic losses of our intelligence during the period of Stalin’s “Great Terror”, about the so-called “killer doctors” case, about Beria, about the dangerous clash with former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition in the notorious “Cold War”. The book is written on the basis of recently declassified documents from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, specially provided to the author, his own meetings with participants and eyewitnesses of the described events both in our country and abroad.