Book excerpt: “A riveting imagined world, so real in fact that one always wonders if it is imagined at all.” —Scott Turow Made restless by the tightening restrictions of CIA bureaucracy, agent Alan Taylor oversteps moral and legal bounds in a top-secret mission to destabilize the Soviet Union. His new recruit—the beautiful Anna Barnes, who struggles with complex feelings for Taylor—receives a deeper education than she signed up for in David Ignatius’s trademark world of shifting international and domestic pressures, hidden loyalties, and secret agendas.