Dmitri Bystrolyotov (1901-1975) led a life that might seem far-fetched, even for a spy novel, yet here the truth is stranger than fiction. In Stalin's Romeo Spy, a private meeting in Moscow in 1973 eventually prompts Emil Draitser into years of meticulous research, piecing together a tumultuous career played out in the shadows of the twentieth century. A sailor, artist, doctor, lawyer, and writer, fluent in many languages, Bystrolyotov was the Russian equivalent of the British "Ace of Spies," Sydney Reilly. One of the "Great Illegals," a team of outstanding Soviet spies operating in Western countries between the world wars, Bystrolyotov was a dashing man whose modus operandi was the seduction of women—among them a French Embassy employee, the wife of a British official, and a disfigured Gestapo officer. He stole military secrets from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and enabled Stalin to look into the diplomatic pouches of many European countries. Idealistically committed to his Motherland, he showed extraordinary courage and physical prowess—twice crossing the Sahara Desert and the jungles of Congo.More