Moryak

'Moryak' is the story of Lieutenant Stephen Morrison, a naval officer sent by President Theodore Roosevelt on a top-secret mission in 1905. His assignment: to work with British agent Sidney Reilly to kidnap Tsar Nicholas II and remove him from Russia before he can can sabotage the upcoming Portsmouth Peace Conference. Morrison would seem to be an ideal man for the job- he was born in Russia, is fluent in the language, and is knowledgeable concerning Russian political affairs. He also carries significant emotional scars. He is the son of an immigrant Russian rabbi and he has had to battle rabid anti-Semitism his entire life in his quest to become both a naval officer and an assimiliated American.The mission goes awry and Morrison is captured and sentenced to death. Through a quirk of fate, he is instead sent to the infamous Russian prison camp on Solovetsky Island. There, his increasingly violent nature eventually allows him to dominate the camp as 'Moryak' (Russian for Sailor). He soon catches the attention of the Bolshevik prisoners and their growing interactions come to have devastating effects on the evolving revolution in Russia, as well as the Allied war effort as the world descends into the chaos of World War I.