It is November 1941. John Russell is still living in Berlin, still enabled to stay by the American passport inherited from his mother, and still tied to the increasingly dangerous city by his love for two Berliners: his thirteen-year-old son, Paul, and his actress girlfriend, Effi. Now one of a small and dwindling handful of permitted and much-censored American journalists, Russell has begun to help the anti-Nazi Abwehr. At the same time, a combination of necessity and conscience pushes him into working for both the American and Soviet espionage services. But his real work, as he now sees it, is to answer one crucial question ? what is happening in the East, to both the local population and the Jews who are now being shipped in that direction? And his mission is, eventually, to get the answer out to the wider world. AUTHOR: David Downing is the author of a political thriller, two alternative histories and a number of books on military and political history and other subjects as diverse as Neil Young and Russian football. REVIEWS: ?An extraordinary evocation of Nazi Germany on the eve of war, the smell of cruelty seeping through the clean modern surface.' C.J. SANSOM AUTHOR OF WINTER IN MADRID ?A wonderfully drawn spy novel. [An] auspicious début, with more to come' BOOKSELLER ?Exciting and frightening all at once? it's got everything going for it' JULIE WALTERS ?A most readable and clever tale, full of striking inventions' KINGSLEY AMIS on THE MOSCOW OPTION