1974 - An intricate thriller of espionage and foreign intrigue, the novel turns on a Cypriot hit man hired by the CIA to assassinate a female Soviet mole en route to Leningrad aboard a Soviet freighter.Charged by the Justice Department and the FBI with espionage and facing arrest in Washington, D.C., the CIA intervenes and allows the Soviets to recall her, in order to avoid the embarrassment of revealing to the world that the U.S. had been duped. Now the CIA sets in motion a covert action to board the vessel at its final port of call in Famagusta, Cyprus and there deal with the mole once and for all.As the Agency plots the slow progress of the freighter across the Atlantic and into the Eastern Mediterranean the ouzo flows and the cigarette smoke swirls in the Constantia Taverna in Famagusta where the Cypriot and his former sidekick, who wants in on the action, debate the risks of the assignment and how best to carry it out.But an hour away, in the capital city of Nicosia, and behind the closed doors of the Soviet Embassy, countermeasures are being put into play. From Moscow to the KGB Rezidentura comes a heightened alert the Americans intend to double-cross them.