Mission to Tashkent

'one of the best books about secret intelligence work ever written' Peter Hopkirk.

Colonel F. M. Bailey, whose extraordinary adventures are told here, was long accused by Moscow of being a British master-spy sent in 1918 to overthrow the Bolsheviks in Central Asia.

As a result, he enjoyed many years after his death an almost legendary reputation there - that of half-hero, half-villain.

In this remarkable book he tells of the perilous game of cat-and-mouse, lasting sixteen months, which he played with the Bolshevik secret police, the dreaded Cheka.

At one point, using a false identity, he actually joined the ranks of the latter, who unsuspectingly sent him to Bokhara to arrest himself.

Told with almost breathtaking understatement, Bailey's narrative - set in a region once more back in the headlines - reads like vintage Buchan.