The Red Menace is unraveling.

Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Putin stares with rage through the frosted window of his office inside the KGB headquarters.

The unassuming three-story villa is in the center of Dresden, one of the few buildings to withstand the Allied bombing campaign against Nazi Germany.

Now the town of 500,000 people is controlled by the Communist Party in East Berlin, which takes

its orders from Moscow.

The KGB building boasts a communal kitchen, a recreation room, an armory, accommodations for visiting

diplomats, and a lavish ballroom adorned with marble busts of

Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin. On the ground floor, a hidden door reveals a subterranean

complex of prison cells, torture chambers, and an execution space that is frequently used.

Three stories above, the 37-year-old Putin runs a vast network of undercover agents for his

superiors in the Kremlin.

His men have infiltrated many governments in Europe, including France, Great Britain, and Italy.

Footnote.

The Comitet Gosodarsvina Bezopastnistya, or KGB, is Russian for Committee for State Security.

It was established after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and remained the Soviet Union's

main security agency until its dissolution in 1991.

End footnote.

The lieutenant colonel wears a brown suit, green tie,

and smokes his favorite brand of German cigarettes,

F-6 filters, exhaling plumes of tobacco,

as he watches a violent spectacle unfold on the street below.

Putin is a muscular man of average height with blonde hair slicked to the side.

...