Mission to Tashkent

Book excerpt: This book relates the extraordinary adventures of Colonel F.M. Bailey, the famous British undercover agent. Long accused by Moscow as a master-spy orchestrating the destruction of Bolshevism in Central Asia, Bailey tells a tale that is at once spellbinding, thrilling, and even darkly humorous. In Mission to Tashkent Bailey relates in compelling detail the perilous game of cat-and-mouse that he played with Cheka--the dreaded Bolshevik secret police--for sixteen remarkable months. At one point, using a false identity, he actually joined the ranks of the rival intelligence force, which unsuspectingly sent him to Bokhara with orders to arrest himself. Told with almost breathtaking understatement, and now reprinted for the first time since the British Foreign Office first cleared it for publication in 1946, Bailey's narrative will excite and intrigue anyone who loves real-life adventure, or simply a good spy story.