"It is 1944. The German Army crumbles before the unstoppable tide of advancing Soviet forces.

In the midst of the fighting, two Russian soldiers seek refuge in the crypt of a German church. There, clutched in the hands of the skeleton of a priest, they find The Shepherd: a priceless icon, last seen in the possession of the mad monk, Rasputin, who held the Romanov family in his thrall.

When news of the icon's discovery reaches Moscow, Stalin summons his most trusted investigator, Inspector Pekkala. To unravel the secret of the icon's past, Pekkala traces its last known whereabouts to a band of self-mutilating radicals, who were hunted to extinction years ago by the Bolshevik Secret Police. Or so it was believed."

Great story. I learnt a lot about:
Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Romanov family:
the declaration of war against the Habsburg Empire;
the subsequent killing of Austrian Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia;
Rasputin the Siberian monk who the German born Tsarina admired;
Kaiser Wilhelm;
I had never read about the secret Christian sect know as the Skoptsy's and their obsessions. A great tale indeed