About the book: 2013 / The collection includes the stories “Dervish” and the NKVD fantasy “His name was simply Teacher.” Intelligence was and remains the most ancient profession on our Earth. We don’t know a lot, we guess about something, but sometimes a genetic memory awakens in us, opening the pages of distant history and we find ourselves where big politics were made. A French knight, an officer of the border guard corps, a Cossack cornet and a clerk of the Iranian Shah, genetically related to each other and their adventures while performing special tasks in the interests of the Russian Empire. In 1918, the Bolsheviks created the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, the Cheka. Overwhelmed by good intentions, they created a system of public secret controllers of the activities of the Cheka, who were called “teachers” with the right to appeal to the first person of the state. Very soon the authorities came to their senses and began to destroy teachers and their students like dangerous animals.