The book was written by a KGB officer who fled to the West. Levchenko took up the pen not at all in order to entertain the reader with the dizzying adventures of the agent, although his life was full of just such adventures, and he talked about many of them in his book. But first of all, he wanted to show the West how insidious, dangerous and strong his opponent is. KGB Major Stanislav Levchenko fled to the United States in 1979, and in 1989 received American citizenship. It was he who declassified the names of about two hundred Japanese agents of the most powerful Soviet spy network abroad. In 1981, he was sentenced to death in absentia by a Soviet court.