Russian journalist Leo Krakin pursues an unusual second job in an unlikely time and place--as a private investigator in the Soviet Union of the early 1960s. He takes on a seemingly simple task of finding a professor's missing manuscript that draws him and his girlfriend Anya into a complex plot involving a murder and an audacious Cold War deception regarding weapons of mass destruction. In the course of his investigation, Krakin must deal with the KGB, the Soviet Academy of Science and its director T. D. Lysenko, the Soviet Army, a black market kingpin, a mysterious American agent and a wealthy American publisher, and a key Soviet government leader. Krakin evades one threat after another, only to face a choice that, if he survives, will determine the course of the rest of his life.