The genius of terror, an electrical engineer by training, a gentleman always dressed in the latest fashion, Leonid Borisovich Krasin, is a legendary but forgotten figure. In pre-revolutionary Moscow salons, ladies adored this dandy, a future member of Lenin's government. Vasily Aksenov dedicated his novel to Krasin. His hero, a man without a shadow, the Bolshevik Prometheus, robbed banks and cash registers, killed secret police agents, obtained weapons, and made explosives. Lenin entrusted him - the Soviet James Bond - with the “Combat Technical Group under the Central Committee” (combat detachment of the RSDLP). Such heroes can no longer be found. And the Aksenov in this novel is not at all the Aksenov we know from “Colleagues” and “Star Ticket.” Strict, sharp-tongued, terrifying in the power of his character descriptions, he created a hymn to the hero of a bygone era.