At the height of the Cold War in 1958, Lois Vale is sent to Russia as a secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow. In fact, she is rather more than a secretary. She is on a deep cover secret service mission to discover the identity of another suspected betrayer in the febrile era after the defections of notorious British traitors Burgess and Maclean.

In Moscow’s closed and paranoid atmosphere Lois knows she can trust only one man: Johann, a German journalist also working undercover for MI6. Lois and Johann begin an affair, initially to disguise their connection. A real romance soon develops but Lois fears that their mission has already been fatally compromised before she had even arrived by a stranger on the Helsinki to Moscow train.

The information and espionage world is a hall of mirrors. The constant pressure of being watched is no easier on a sparkling day when the snow lies banked on the ground and the domes of the Kremlin flame in the sun. Under snow-laden skies, in shadowy corners and the bright, brittle merry-go-round of diplomatic parties, in the frozen squares and boulevards designed for parades of military might, who can tell what is true and what is not?

When at last Lois and Johann follow a potential Soviet informant to Vienna and the Black Sea she finds herself in a worse, totally unforeseen situation. Only one thing is certain: nothing is as she thought it was.

Authentic and historical details are provided by the 1958 diary kept in Moscow by the author’s own mother, who worked for British intelligence.