Now reprinted, this revealing autobiography includes a prologue and epilogue written by two of the author's sons, Leeroy and Peter, who have pieced together more of this poignant love and life story. Nora's father, as Director General of the Soviet Foreign Office based in Moscow, is purged by Stalin, leaving his young daughter without kith or kin. The State forces her to meet up with diplomats and foreigners to report back with any information on their activities. One of her targets is John Murray, a cypher (code writer/decoder) at the British Embassy in Moscow. However, by falling in love with him she is classified as a traitor, arrested and imprisoned. John achieves her release by Stalin. In 1939, John and others of the Embassy staff are evacuated when the German army enters Moscow's suburbs. He is sent to Archangel, leaving Nora alone in his John's embassy quarters. With only forged papers, she begins a terrifying 1,000 kilometer journey to the desolate wastes of the Arctic port to bid farewell to John. Instead, they decide to marry; this and their eventual escape to safety and happiness in England shapes a thrilling climax to this true story.

THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: Narrative that is direct, candid, unpretentious. A member of a highly privileged caste in Soviet society... reduced to a 'mozho' girl mixing with foreigners, with instructions to report on them... the real story is in the simple, graphic and almost entirely persuasive account of her observations - some amusing and others horribly or pitifully gruesome. In the unforgiving WWII climate of 1940, 21-year old Nora is faced with a perilous ultimatum: Enlist with Stalin's secret police as a honey trap, or face the death of her family. Despairingly she agrees. Nora finds herself struggling to seduce her target, John Murray, a British Embassy cypher in Moscow. As two disparate lives intertwine, their desperate escape leads the couple through frozen Arctic wastelands, clutching forged papers and hopes not just for survival but for a future together.