They were the storm petrels, the birds that fly before the storm. They were five men - one of them Stalin's personal secretary - who defected to the West in the years between the two world wars. Their dramatic, hitherto untold stories mix history and true-life spy adventure in a book as exciting as it is important.
Some of them fled for ideological reasons - they chose freedom. Some fled from fear of Stalinist purges. One fled to be with the woman he loved. Their adventures were the stuff of novels - running Stalin's gantlet, travelling by train, by boat, even by camel, leaping over walls and hiding in hotel rooms, going public or going underground, each seeking his own kind of safety. They were all hunted by Soviet assassins, and two did not elude their pursuers.
And they all came bearing priceless secrets from inside the Kremlin walls. What Western intelligence did - and, often, failed to do - with this information is a startling hidden chapter in history.