Charlie Stone is a brilliant analyst for the CIA who has made an illustrious reputation for predicting the unpredictable ways of the Kremlin. He's summoned urgently to read the transcript of a tape recording smuggled out of the Soviet Union by one of the few remaining moles. His expert assessment-not only is there an ominous coup in the making, a power struggle that will make glasnost a thing of the past-but he senses that the conspiracy may well be linked to an old family mystery: why his father, a prominent Harvard historian, was imprisoned during the McCarthy era. Suddenly, Stone's investigation becomes deeply personal.