Night Soldiers - Alan Furst

In 1934, Khristo Stoianev, a new recruit in Russia's elite intelligence corps, began a new kind of war in which the killing was secret, calculated, and efficient. But now he is a hunted man, betrayed by Stalin's purges, and before his silent war is over, every rule will be broken . . . and all loyalties discarded. Dark Star. nBulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin's purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-creates nthe European world of 1934-45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944. Night Soldiers is a scrupulously researched panoramic novel, a work on a grand scale.