Readers are offered a collection of biographical essays about remarkable people - employees of the illegal unit of Soviet foreign intelligence, who selflessly carried out important tasks for the Motherland far beyond its borders. The book is based on declassified archival materials of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and the Hall of its History. The author of the book is a veteran of foreign intelligence (retired colonel), journalist and writer, laureate of the SVR Prize of Russia in the field of literature and art, and a number of other literary awards and competitions. After graduating from the Red Banner Institute of the KGB (now the Foreign Intelligence Academy), he worked for more than forty years in the central and foreign foreign intelligence apparatus, as well as in its Press Bureau.