Vasily Zubakin wrote an adventurous novel about the life of a contemporary of the 20th century, Baron d'Astier - an aristocrat from the highest Parisian society, a decadent poet, a drug addict, a womanizer, a naval officer, an underground hero, one of the leaders of the French Resistance, and then a participant in the global struggle for peace and even a laureate of the international Lenin Prize. “There are portraits of his ancestors hanging in his apartment; almost all of them were ministers of the interior: some of Napoleon, some of Louis Philippe... General de Gaulle appointed d’Astier minister of the interior. However, he was not a minister for long: the war had already been won, and Don Quixote’s spear was out of season” (Ilya Erenburg). Who really was this man of many faces, whom Churchill, de Gaulle and Khrushchev valued so highly? A noble knight, a thrill-seeker, a dreamer, a KGB agent? Why did the daughter of Leonid Krasin trust him in everything, but the daughter of Joseph Stalin did not? And what is the fate of the mysterious book about Stalin, which Emmanuel d’Astier allegedly began to write?