"Ivory Tower agent Alexander Petrovich Lukin thought heading a secret research program was his ticket to advancement out of the field. However, he learns he’s been set up to fail after he gets a tip that not everything in the program is as it seems. Things only take a turn for the worse when Salt Mine agents Nalin Buchholz and Joan Liu arrive on the scene and find themselves in a race against the clock in the frigid silence of the Siberian winter."