In Moscow’s post-Soviet intelligence war, burned former operative Dmitri moves through the city as Nikolai Seregin, a dead journalist with no paper trail and no agency backing him. When a dossier brands him a double agent and a high-profile assassination tied to his old team triggers scrutiny, the shunned spy in Spiral of Deceit is forced into a domestic counterintelligence hunt that begins inside his own institution, not against a foreign enemy. He has to prove who framed him before the record is rewritten for good.

Using interrogation and elicitation, Dmitri must uncover the traitor feeding false intelligence to create political turmoil and stop a mole hunt from collapsing into another purge. But the enemy’s power base is deeper than one operative: a web of corrupted officials and old KGB loyalists can manipulate state media, sanitize phone calls, and bury dissent until the false story looks official. With a high-profile public event in three days poised to expose the mole in real time, every source he questions can become part of the trap.

Dmitri’s fatal flaw is his need to be seen as useful, so he trusts frightened informants too quickly and doubts the cautious allies who might actually help him. That weakness pulls him toward a desperate source, a risky exfiltration bargain, and a former ally seeking safe haven in exchange for the one piece of intelligence that could break the case. Every answer he buys risks exposing the dead journalist identity he has worn for four years, a fragile façade with no documentation to defend it.