In the dying days of the Cold War, during a joint US-Soviet science project, communist astrophysicist Victor Perov and his American colleague Katherine Sears fall dangerously in love. Though the passionate alliance does not shake Victor's faith in the Party, Katherine's revelation that his twin brother Anton, believed killed in Afghanistan, is actually imprisoned somewhere in the Soviet psychiatric gulag, does. Every step Victor takes to find Anton pits him against his fellow communists and even his own mother, a high-ranking Soviet minister known as the Iron Perova. Meanwhile, an unwitting accomplice, a disgruntled KGB officer, stumbles upon the corpse of an ambulence driver / informant Victor was meant to meet. As suspense mounts, the shocking events leading to the driver's death are linked to a refugee being shot down in the forbidden zone on the Siberian border, a mystery man whose identity is the key to Anton's whereabouts. His career, his family and his life at risk, Victor must learn who to trust in this deadly game of Party Politics in order to save the woman he loves and his twin brother.

Author Biography

Michael Hetzer was founding editor of The Moscow Times, the first-ever English-language daily newspaper in Russia. Between 1990 and 1995, he also founded The Moscow Guardian, a weekly newspaper in English, and the monthly magazine Vitrina, which he edited in Russian. While living in Russia, he served as editor of the English-language edition of the Russian newspaper Kommersant. In 1996 he left journalism to write novels full-time. He now lives with his wife and two children in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.