A picture that accidentally fell out of a book excited a host of recollections in the narrator, a Russian-English interpreter and spy twenty years before, who had accompanied a small British delegation during its two days visit to Moscow in the early nineties of the past century. The delegation consisted of the top manager of a big British arms company – his name is Robert Hewlett - and his secretary Mary Kilgorn.
The narrator – his name is Sergey - is about forty, very handsome (and he’s fully aware of this fact as it soon comes out, because he uses his good looks and charm as a means of worming secrets out of the women he comes into close contact with).
The novel is set in the early nineties Moscow with its horrible realities of wild capitalism, raging criminality, total corruption and degradation of moral values.
