Taking Her Bows

How far would you go to keep a secret?

She kept all the secrets.

Grace Lydell has longed for the stage since she played a cucumber in her third-grade play. A standout in high school and college drama clubs, she has a dream: She's going to make it on Broadway.

Her college advisor was pleased with her International Relations - Eastern Bloc major, but he couldn't discourage her from minoring in musical theater. That didn't stop him from bringing her to the attention of the U.N.'s clandestine intelligence service.

At first, Grace sees her job as an analyst for the Directorate as a way to save money for her inevitable trip to New York and the rounds of auditions she hopes will put her name in lights.

Along the way, she comes to understand the Directorate's mission, makes lifelong friends, and finds love--the unrequited kind, but love nonetheless.

She also becomes burdened with the Directorate's most sensitive secrets, which she makes note of, but at the end of her career . . . No, the end of her life, she realizes she trusts only two people in the world to keep those secrets--Mai Fisher and Alexei Bukharin.

Will they keep Grace's secrets or use them for their own purposes?