Barnes Carr

“After the Russian Civil War, Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence officers would pride themselves on being nondescript. They wore suits and ties. They shaved. They got haircuts. They were no more tough-looking than anybody else you saw on the street. Under Dzerzhinsky, though, a menacing appearance was de rigueur for a headhunter. That included a heavy beard stubble. All Bolsheviks who weren’t at a top level were supposed to look shoddy, DeWitt Poole later wrote.”
― Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot: The Untold Story of America's Midnight War Against Russia

“Boris hung out at cafés and race tracks. He enjoyed strolling down the Champs Élysées wearing kid gloves, yellow spats, and straw boater, with cane in hand and his trademark white gardenia in his boutonnière. Chez Duval was his favorite restaurant, Closerie des Lilas his most loved bar. He met spies and revolutionaries at La Rotonde and entertained them with stories of his salad days when he was blowing away tsarist bureaucrats with the regularity of a mail train.”
― Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot: The Untold Story of America's Midnight War Against Russia