The events described in the novel Archive № 1 are based on the actual events of the early 50s of the last century. It was then that the USSR MSS (Ministry of State Security, the future KGB) organized the so-called Bureau № 1, a secret department tasked with neutralizing the supporters of Hitler’s fascism outside the Union. The department was organized by the legendary Soviet intelligence operative and saboteur, Pavel Sudoplatov.
At the center of the story are two graduates of the Soviet Intelligence School, recent students Andrey Fomenko, yesterday’s attendee of the Moscow Mechanical Institute and future nuclear physicist, and Ivan Sarmatov, almost graduate of the translation faculty at the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages (the future Jose Valdez). They and their commander, Major Sergey Kotov, have to find and neutralize a group of fugitive German nuclear physicists in Argentina who, on the instructions of local dictator Juan Perón, are building nuclear weapons at an isolated center in the country’s interior.
In Argentina, the interests of several powers clash – the Soviet Union, the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Everyone is pursuing the atomic secrets of the former Third Reich. And it is hardly surprising: with Kurchatov’s gift of the atomic bomb, the world has established a kind of nuclear parity, and anyone who masters the new technologies first will become the world leader in this field. The era of the Cold War is just around the corner, with the recent allies now ready to clutch at each other’s throats.
The struggle for intelligence, the personal courage of the protagonists, love and genuine friendship – all this is reflected in the pages of this novel. What ended the fight for the atomic prize, who came out on top in this fight between the cloak and dagger knights? And what the Soviet scouts discovered in the end, in their search for the mysterious Archive № 1, will be a pleasant surprise for the inquisitive reader.
