Evgeny Andreyanovich Ivin (1930–2002) is a professional intelligence officer, graduated from the Military Diplomatic Academy. As an international journalist, he worked in the Middle East and the United States, where he was discovered by the CIA, arrested and sentenced to a long prison term. But a few years later he was exchanged for a foreign agent detained in the USSR. After his release, he worked as a correspondent for the Ogonyok magazine, defended his Ph.D. thesis and at the same time was engaged in literary creativity. The first experience is the proposed stories: “The Case of a Mysterious Murder”, “His Great War” and “Saboteurs”, which are based on real stories from the author’s eventful biography.