“Silk Lingerie” is the concluding part of the tetralogy “The Secret Envoy,” the first two books of which were published in Russian in 1973 under the general title “The Envoy of Urus-Shaitan,” and the third—“The Black Rider”—in 1981.
Arsen Zvenyhora and his friends—Roman Voinov, a Don Cossack; the Russian archer Kuzma Rozhkov; the Pole Martyn Spyhalskyi; the commander of Bulgarian rebel-hayduts Mladen with his son Nenko—continued their heroic struggle against their hated enemy. And then a terrible grief struck Arsen: in the whirlpool of military turmoil, his beloved girl Zlаtka disappeared. Long searches in Ukraine, in Crimea, and in the Budjak Horde proved futile. At last it became known that she was in far-away Istanbul, in the harem of the great vizier Kara-Mustafa… And Arsen and Nenko went there, swearing to free Zlаtka or die in an unequal fight against a powerful enemy…