About the book: 2024 / A novel about wartime, about the difficult destinies and dangerous work of unknown heroes who were part of the strike force of "Beria's special forces." Soviet counterintelligence becomes aware that that after the retreat of the Wehrmacht units, German agents remained in the Caucasus region, and they are preparing a serious provocation. An explosion is planned in the mountains, as a result of which one of the local mining and processing plants will be buried under a powerful mudflow. Maxim Shelestov's group is tasked with preventing sabotage. The operatives manage to identify and destroy the bulk of the militants. But their leader remains at large. To lure him into a trap, Shelestov instructs his assistant Mikhail Sosnovsky to play one unusual “role”... “This series is good because it conveys the correct main idea: in the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria knew how to trust people, because the People's Commissar himself knew how to trust them. The story of Major Shelestov’s group is similar to the real story of a major Abwehr agent, former staff captain of the tsarist army Nelidov, who ended up in the Lubyanka in September 1939. The adventures of Maxim Shelestov and his comrades described in this novel look all the more probable against the background of Nelidov’s story.” — S. Kremlev