It is August 1991. In Berlin, an emigre Russian couple involved in the export of icons are found murdered, the woman brutally tortured. A year later, in Moscow, an officer in the security service of the new Russian Federation is ordered to find a rogue agent of the former KGB, Andrei Orlov, who has disappeared without a trace.These apparently unconnected events are followed by the arrival in Berlin of American art historian Francesca McDermott, recruited to organize a major retrospective exhibition of Russian experimental art, a priceless gathering of the greatest Russian paintings of the twentieth century that communism had dismissed as "decadent." Working with Francesca is a Russian expert, Serotkin - attractive and mysterious, but a chauvinist whose ideas for the exhibition invariably conflict with Francesca's. Gradually, despite their reluctance, the two high-minded academics are drawn together.Brilliantly cast in the form of a post-Cold War thriller, The Patriot catches the political and moral turmoil in Moscow after the failed coup against Gorbachev, and in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. At once richly dramatic and morally complex, it is a novel about love, faith, and patriotism, and the stark choices that must be made when these emotions and ideals conflict. Read Less