Introduction -- A note on sources and terminology -- PART ONE: The first illegals -- Roots : the Bolshevik underground -- The old man : the first head of Soviet foreign intelligence -- The fast flier : the greatest of the great illegals -- The terror : Stalin's purges -- PART TWO: War and Cold War -- Inroads to America : the first illegals in the United States -- Operation Duck : the assassination of Leon Trotsky -- Operation Barbarossa : Hitler invades the Soviet Union -- The whistler : undercover in Nazi Germany -- Early infiltrations : the Cold War begins -- Signor Ambasciatore : the mission to kill Tito -- The illegals go public : the trial of Rudolf Abel and the CIA's attempts to create illegals -- PART THREE: The story of an illegal -- Origin : the recruitment and training of an illegal -- Matchmaking : the search for a partner and co-illegal -- Infiltration : entering the West -- Operation Progress : undermining the Prague Spring -- The mobile resident : on assignment in Israel -- PART FOUR: Cold War battle fronts -- The Baron von Hohenstein : undercover in West Germany -- The main enemy : spying on the Americans -- The inheritor : the attempt to create a second-generation illegal -- Diminishing returns : the KGB keeps going -- Eleven days in Kabul : a secret coup and the birth of the "fighting illegal" -- PART FIVE: Collapse and resurrection -- The threat of war : rising tensions and new illegals -- The end : the collapse of the Soviet Union -- Stierlitz takes over : the rise of Vladimir Putin -- Operation Ghost Stories : the FBI swoops -- The virtual illegals : election meddling and easy deniability -- The lives of wonderful people : the cult of the illegal -- Afterword -- KGB terminology and structure -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.