The Cold Zone

“We may have won the Cold War, Mr. President, but we haven’t won the peace, yet!” Republican Senator John Payne, Chairman of the National Security Committee, has just returned from Moscow and a tour of a Russian uranium enrichment plant, when an international scandal breaks in a tabloid newspaper. Its source is an ambitious American tabloid reporter and an indigent Russian nuclear security officer.

In a matter of four brief days, Exacerbator reporter, Lucy Cannon, and Major Ivan Kuznets provoke an international crisis of such magnitude that the official hysteria generated by the possibility of a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Russia is only offset by the sometimes hilarious measures taken by the principals to head it off. To no avail. The outcome rides on a game of political brinkmanship between a Russian Defense Minister and an underworld freelancer who goes by the handle, “Cossack.”

 Combining political satire, romantic comedy, thriller, suspense/intrigue, the sophisticated, complex, fast-paced plot flirts with the implausible, but remains convincing, cutting across partisan politics to address a serious issue of continuing international urgency: the security of stockpiled nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union.