Double crossing

International intrigue and human rights infuse the plot of Double Crossing—an espionage novel that twists and turns with conflict, betrayal, and deception: the story's multilayered "double crossings." When a man is killed on a bridge that spans East Germany and West Berlin, Russian doctor Kiril Andreyev loses more than a treasured comrade-in-arms. The door has just slammed shut on a carefully engineered escape plan. In the bitter aftermath, Kiril finds himself perilously close to rebellion against a suffocating regime that controls virtually every aspect of his life. Despite Kiril's longstanding contempt for his country's "scientific exchanges" (arranged by communist party apparatchiks as career-enhancing propaganda ploys), he sees a way to use one such program in a desperate new bid for freedom. His unwitting instrument of escape: Dr. Kurt Brenner, the renowned heart surgeon. An American! But Dr. Brenner proves to be a man with secrets of his own. In stark contrast, Brenner's wife is recklessly outspoken. Adrienne Brenner, a journalist of fierce independence and passionate ideals, shatters Kiril's preconceptions of American women—even as she creates unexpected conflicts and hazardous complications. Ensnared in a deadly rivalry between East German and Soviet intelligence, wrenched by old—and new—family loyalties, Kiril struggles to reach the perilous crossing once planned with a friend.... Knowing he must now attempt it with an enemy.