Readers opening the New York Times on the morning of February 7, 1909, saw the headline: Police and Reds Both Hunt Azeff. "Where is Azeff?" the report began. "Who will get to him first? Who will be his executioner, the Russian police or the revolutionists?" Russian anticzarist terrorists had sentenced the missing man to death for being a Secret Police spy - while the czarist authorities were hunting him down for being a revolutionary!.

True to form, Azef eluded all his pursuers until his death in Berlin in 1918 - and just as successfully eluded the subsequent attempts of journalists, historians, and novelists to make sense of his character and motives.

Who was this man who betrayed scores of revolutionaries to the czarist police while at the same time organizing the assassination of the powerful minister of the interior as well as that of Grand Duke Sergei - and coming within a hair's breadth of orchestrating the killing of the czar himself? How could - and why would - anyone play such a deadly double game?

1. Richard Rubenstein, an expert on political violence, is the first writer to make Azef comprehensible both as a political figure and as a human being. Drawing on materials that illuminate every side of the case, Rubenstein has created a singularly compelling and evocative portrait of a man, a way of thinking, and an endlessly fascinating place and time.