The reader may remember that the father of Vickenty Irtenyev, the hero of the novels “Viennese Fairy Tale,” “Between Time,” and “The House in the Back Alley,” was an officer of the Russian General Staff. But didn’t he, too, act as a scout? This book tells about two unusual, complex, and dangerous raids against the Empire’s enemies, undertaken by Irtenyev the elder on the eve of the upheavals that struck our Fatherland.