`An astute mix of fact and fiction. Within this imaginative and exciting adventure story, Stalin`s heinous character is revealed in an informative new light.` Puck Literary Magazine `Kill him, Commander!` The Prime Minister`s words to Commander Alexander Gerasimov of the Okhrana, or Tsarist secret police, spell death to an Armenian revolutionary called Kamo - Symion Ter-Petrossian - involved in a bank raid in Tbilisi that ended in a bloodbath. As Kamo paces the streets of Berlin with Gerasimov hard on his heels, it becomes clear that a third party - `Yellow Cloth,` also called Koba - is vital to the Tsar recovering a hoard of his own gold ingots, stolen in the bank raid and hidden by Koba in the mud caves of the Kura River. Only Kamo knows Yellow Cloth`s true identity, therefore the Armenian terrorist has to be killed before he can reveal the secret - in order that the Russian empire may survive. This superb fictionalised account of Russia`s twentieth-century birth pangs is a masterpiece of action, characterisation and horror. Against the relentless march of history appear creatures of such evil that they barely deserve the name of human beings; Koba, or Stalin as he became known, Britain`s one-time ally, was one of these monsters. But the author`s skill means that we feel sympathy for both hunter and hunted - for Gerasimov and Kamo - right to the end of the saga, and even retain a kind of understanding for the man of steel himself, Comrade Stalin.