"Alex finds himself in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, doing the kind of Cold War espionage work — chronicling train arrivals and shipments and the like — that is mundane on the one hand but viewed as vital in the struggle against Soviet oppression. The complications are numerous, though, because of Estonia’s recent history: taken over by the Soviets, and then by the Nazis, and then by the Soviets again, all in the space of a few years. The result is a kind of national dizziness, as people who cozied up to the Soviets, and then the Nazis, and then the Soviets again, attempt to look their neighbors in the eye without tumbling over. And even years after the end of World War II, the fight against Nazism seemingly won, the Hitler-lovers remain as unkill-able as cockroaches."