IT'S 1958 AND THE U.S. MCCARTHY WITCH HUNTS ARE DESTROYING lives, while in Russia, Stalinist hardliners are fighting Khrushchev's reforms. Both countries are paranoid over the other's nuclear threat. A Russian bomber trying to deliver a threatening message to an American Air Force Base crashes on a remote Alaskan lake. The lone survivor, Major Anton Bidkov, has flown the mission to free his wife from a political gulag, even though he knows in his heart that she is already dead. Ellen, a self-exiled widow of a career U.S. intelligence officer, whose life was destroyed when he was denounced as a Communist sympathizer, rescues Anton. Realizing that both share similar stories, their common betrayal sparks a fire inside that each thought was forever gone. Ellen and Anton's impossible affair faces one major threat; each is a trained professional and patriot who together may have the key to stopping the deadly North Pacific air war between America and Russia. Is it worth risking what they have, to do what each knows is right? Do they owe their respective governments anything?