Robert Halliday is coerced into helping Karlis Zander, an international fixer, into editing a Russian terrorist's memoirs and ghostwriting an exposé of modern terrorists.
When a beautiful country girl leaves her farm and baby behind to pursue a singing career in Nashville, her naïve dreams of stardom descend into a perverse nightmare.
Joseph Mnwana arrives at Heathrow on a flight from Johannesburg and asks for political asylum. But what is he fleeing from? The authorities are suspicious, and Joseph has an uncertain future in store.
On a West German Autobahn, Robert plummets from a bridge and is hospitalized. As he recovers, he flashes back to a Bulgarian holiday where he met Jutta and her uncle Lothar, who’d ordered a West German passport to smuggle her out of the DDR.
The boisterous good humor of Jurmala, the nickel-mine owner, is, if anything, only barely dented by the raging battles in Finland before, during and after World War Two.