Washington DC, 1953. The Cold War is heating up; McCarthyism, in all its fear and demagoguery, is raging in the nation’s capital, and Joseph Stalin’s death has left a dangerous power vacuum in the Soviet Union.

The CIA, meanwhile, is reeling from the discovery of a double agent within their midst. Someone is selling secrets to the Soviets, compromising missions and endangering lives around the globe. The CIA director knows any news of the traitor, whose code name is Protocol, would be a national embarrassment and weaken the entire agency. He assembles an elite team to find Protocol.

George Mueller seems to be the perfect man to help the investigation: Yale-educated; extensive experience running missions in Eastern Europe; an operative so dedicated to his job that it left his marriage in tatters. Mueller, though, has secrets of his own, and as he digs deeper into the case, making contact with a Soviet agent, suspicion begins to fall on him, as well. Paranoia and fear spreads and until Protocol is found, no one can be trusted.

Published
April 12, 2016
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Author

Paul Vidich

PAUL VIDICH’S seventh novel, The Poet’s Game, A Spy in Moscow, is forthcoming from Pegasus Books in May 2025. His previous novel, Beirut Station, was selected by CrimeReads as one of the best espionage novels of 2023. His debut novel, An Honorable Man, published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, was selected by Publisher’s Weekly as a Top 10 Mystery and Thriller in 2016. It was followed by The Good Assassin, also published by Simon and Schuster. His third novel, The Coldest Warrior, was widely praised in England and America, earning strong reviews from The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. It was…