Russian roulette

Lenin's Bolsheviks seized the Tsar's Winter Palace in 1917, and the Russian revolution was under way. Lenin's ambitions reached well beyond Russia, however. He hoped to spark uprisings that would bring down every capitalist government in the West, beginning with Britain's empire. This account follows the British agents sent into revolutionary Russia to keep that red tide from reaching the free world.

The spies were an unusual group. Mansfield Cumming, a former sea captain who had lost a leg and wore a monocle, led the effort. Among the others were the novelist W. Somerset Maugham and the children's author Arthur Ransome. The most striking figure was Sidney Reilly, a suave, composed operative known as the Ace of Spies, who is often cited as an inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond.

Cumming's network helped pioneer covert action, and it eventually grew into Britain's Military Intelligence 6, better known as MI6.