Mata Hari did not engage in espionage; there were no basements in the Lubyanka prison; original versions of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the assassination attempt on Leonid Brezhnev; exotic methods of physically eliminating Fidel Castro; the dizzying adventures of espionage ace Kim Philby; unexpected names in the cohort of spies: Daniel Defoe, Pierre Beaumarchais, Somerset Maugham; “super moles” in the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff; KGB agents dance around the Pope. The reader will find all this and much more in the new book of professional counterintelligence officer and writer Igor Atamanenko. The book is based only on facts, but it does not pretend to be a reference book and reads like... an exciting novel!