Spirit of Détente A CIA-KGB Love Story

Moscow, the late 1970s. The KGB is watching the Americans, and the CIA is trying to steal Soviet secrets.

Into this world comes Geena Foster, a young American vice consul at the U.S. Embassy-intelligent, independent, and very attractive.

Denis Granovsky is a KGB officer working in counterintelligence. He knows how to follow people, read their behavior, and recognize deception. He has spent his career studying the Americans.

Then he meets Geena.

They encounter each other at Spaso House, the American ambassador's residence, and what begins as an apparently innocent social meeting develops into an increasingly complicated relationship. They talk. They argue. They joke. They begin seeing each other.

And, inconveniently, they fall in love.

There is only one small difficulty.

Geena is a CIA officer.

Denis is KGB.

Neither knows the other's true identity.

While their relationship develops, the real Cold War continues around them. A Soviet diplomat, Anatoly Ogarkov, code-named Paragon, is secretly working with the CIA. Dead drops are being prepared. Microfilm is changing hands. The KGB is trying to discover which CIA operative is handling one of its most important Soviet sources.

Set against the Moscow of the 1970s-with its surveillance, diplomatic rituals, and the deceptive optimism of the era of détente-Spirit of Détente combines Cold War espionage with romance and comedy.

The novel is partly inspired by the real Aleksandr Ogorodnik case, in which a Soviet diplomat was recruited by the CIA in Bogotá and later became the center of a major intelligence operation in Moscow.

The result is a story about espionage, deception, loyalty, and love.

In the Cold War, falling in love with the enemy was not exactly forbidden.

It was a terrible idea.