It is 1962. Elvis Presley and the Beatles tingle the libidos of teenagers around the world. Condoms are stowed in backroom drawers of soda-fountain pharmacies. Fidel Castro spews a steady stream of Cohibo cigar smoke into the face of an exasperated John Kennedy and the United States, daring anyone to stop his Cuba from becoming a nuclear launch site for the Soviet Union. Hidden away from all the blaring music and political rhetoric, a fiercely hot and deadly battle is being fought in the netherworld of espionage-the mission: to find out which world leader can be forced to flinch in the game of nuclear "Chicken." The Russians are at a great disadvantage in air surveillance. They assign Oksana Pavlodar, who grew up in America as Rachel Cummins, to find out how the Americans intend to replace the now vulnerable U2 spy plane. Rachel homes in on top-secret U.S. surveillance satellites. But she senses something even more important, leading her into the most remote limits of U.S. secrecy-the untested super-surveillance airplane, the SR-71 Blackbird, and its pilot. Success in the unscrupulous confines of espionage can lose meaning. Redefining the objective often requires extreme measures. Who would list the alien principles of unselfish sacrifice and love among them?
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