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 muchcensored 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.