Telefon 1977

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union plants a cadre of deep-cover sleeper agents across the United States, brainwashed to forget they are agents. They can only be activated by a special code phrase—a line from the Robert Frost poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening—followed by the agent’s real first name. Their mission, should war break out, is to sabotage crucial civil and military infrastructure.

More than twenty years pass, and the Cold War softens into détente. Nikolai Dalchimsky, a rogue KGB clerk, travels to America with the Telefon Book, a dossier containing the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of every sleeper agent. He begins triggering them one by one, throwing American counterintelligence into confusion as seemingly ordinary citizens blow up facilities that once seemed valuable. The agents either commit suicide or die in the act.

The KGB cannot reveal this to political leaders—or to the Americans—without admitting its own negligence. Major Grigori Borzov, chosen in part for his photographic memory, memorizes the contents of the only other copy of the Telefon Book and is sent to locate Dalchimsky and stop him quietly before either side learns what is happening.

Borzov is not alone: he has the support of a single agent, Barbara, who had been planted in America years earlier. The plot thickens as Borzov discovers the pattern behind Dalchimsky’s attacks: the killer selects targets by the first letters of their hometowns. Dalchimsky’s next move is anticipated, and Borzov kills him.

Twists emerge: [Barbara] is ordered by the KGB to assassinate Borzov, and she is revealed to be a double agent who actually works for America. Yet she has fallen in love with her target, and she informs Borzov. Together, they force both sides to back off by blackmailing them with the fate of the remaining Telefon agents, effectively holding the threat of a wider catastrophe over everyone’s heads.