Dominika is back in Moscow, promoted, and now spying for the Americans from inside the SVR while being personally noticed by Putin, who appears as himself throughout. The operational thread runs to Vienna and to an Iranian nuclear program, and the book’s tension is entirely about how long a mole that highly placed can last. Matthews keeps up the same procedural rigor and adds the internal politics of Russian intelligence — the flattery, the paranoia, the careerism — which he clearly enjoyed writing. Each chapter still ends with a recipe, which is either charming or maddening (the latter).
Palace of Treason