I just finished reading The Man From St Petersburg by Ken Follett.  

 

It's a real page-turner, less than 400 pages long.  

 

It's fiction set in 1914, when the British were trying to make a military alliance with Russia because they knew that without the Russians, they could not hope to stop the Germans in the upcoming war.  (World War One)   An anarchist from Russia trails the Russian diplomat to London, in order to assassinate him, because he knows that an alliance with the British will mean millions of Russian peasants will die in the upcoming war if Russia gets involved.  

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