Soviet Sources (Colin Burke, 1) (Volume 1)

American journalist Colin Burke may have been in Moscow long enough to lose his naivet, but he hasn't lost his reporter's ambition for that One Big Story. That ambition could prove fatal when a source presents Burke with the story of a lifetime. It blinds him to the fact that he's got only part of a story that stretches to the Kremlin and the White House. He knows just enough to make some dangerous people very uncomfortable. Can he learn the rest in time to save his own skin?

One wishes this first-rate yarn had been published a year ago, so much have recent events surpassed it. Colin Burke, Moscow correspondent for the Washington Tribune is fed news that Gen. Secretary Ponomaryov, a driving force of glasnost , has had a stroke. Burke's source is Kusnetsov, a wily journalist whose own source is Andrushin, head of the KGB. Burke is none too subtly warned off the story as the White House responds to Andrushin's move against glasnost. With deeper involvement, including an affair with Marina, a young Russian actress, Burke realizes the CIA and White House are willing to sacrifice him. The plot spins toward a desperate attempt by Burke and Marina to escape to Finland. In his first novel, former Newsweek Moscow correspondent Cullen effectively depicts Russian life and character ("Russia is like an alcoholic. A strong man--a tsar, a Stalin--is our alcohol."); the White House's manipulative cynicism ("We can't be seen as wimpy"); and the scheming of apparatchiks both East and West. 50,000 first printing; major ad/promo.
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