It is two years after perestroika. Although the leaders of the US and USSR are hugging each other on TV it’s still cold war for their spy networks. And while the doves in the US government are asking for cuts in military spending the hawks are screaming for more. Yakov is a rebel scientist who wants to expose the defects in Russian technology. When his secret documents find their way to the secret service of Britain and US, Barley is recruited and trained in spy work then sent to Russia to establish the genuineness of the source, because the documents were sent to him to publish as a novel, by Yakov whom he met during a visit to Russia.
Barley gets to Russia and falls in love with Katya, a friend of and his contact with Yakov. After his first trip as a spy he is taken over by the Americans who have more at stake in the secret coming out. He agrees to continue and returns to Russia. By this time Yakov had been detained by the Russian authorities. Barley began to suspect this when he noticed that he and Katya were being watched, and again from a letter from Yakov which wasn’t in his usual style. He works out a plan to save Katya and her two kids and puts this into effect when Katya herself learned in code from Yakov that he’d been held. This involved his leaving the British and American secret services to work with the Russians. Katya and her relations were not detained as a result, though Yakov died of illness. After a year in Russia he was in Lisbon, preparing for the arrival of Katya and the kids to join him.
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