The Neutral Room

Every defector brings a gift. Not every gift is meant for you.

Geneva, March 2028. On the eve of a fifty-three-nation conference, a Russian engineer slips away from his delegation and asks Switzerland for asylum.

Ilya Varkov built the machine that manufactures people: patient, plausible online personas that find the lonely and the angry and never forget a word they say. He has brought proof that one of them, a voice called the Brother, is guiding three young men in France toward violence.

Nora Keller is the Swiss intelligence service's most trusted debriefer. She takes no notes. She listens for the moment a story stops sounding like memory. And Varkov sounds like a man telling the truth.

The French want his evidence. The Americans want him. Her own service wants a quiet success before the world's diplomats go home. But the closer Nora looks, the more perfect the material becomes, and the more she suspects that someone in Moscow let Varkov leave on purpose.

In a country that takes no sides, she will have to choose one.

For readers of intelligent, character-driven espionage: defectors and double agents, rival services, and the oldest question in the trade, now harder than ever to answer - whether to believe someone.