1981: Ronald Reagan's inauguration marks a new escalation in the United States' Cold War with the USSR. Months later, Francois Mitterrand is elected president of France with the support of the French Communist Party. The predicted tension between these two men, however, is immediately defused when Mitterrand gives Reagan the Farewell dossier, a file he would later call -one of the greatest spy cases of the twentieth century.-

Vladimir Ippolitovich Vetrov, a promising technical student, joins the KGB to work as a spy. Following a couple of murky incidents, however, Vetrov is removed from...