The brilliant and fearless young reporter Tatiana Petrovna falls to her death from a sixth-floor window in Moscow the same week that a notorious mob billionaire is shot in the back of the head. There is no discernible connection and Tatiana’s death is ruled a suicide. But Investigator Arkady Renko senses that the truth isn’t being told.
And as Arkady delves into Tatiana’s life, he uncovers a mystery as dangerous as modern Russia itself. The trail leads to Kalingrad, an isolated Cold War ‘secret city’, where an elite government translator is found dead on the sand dienes, killed for nothing but a cryptic notebook filled with bizarre symbols.
Now, in a lethal race to uncover what the translator knew, Renko makes a startling discovery that draws him still deeper into Tatiana’s past......
