Helsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. Natalya Bobrova, from Russia, and Louise Koski, from the United States, are young wives of their country's military attachés. When they meet at an embassy party, their husbands, Arnie and Mikhail, both world-class skiers, drunkenly challenge each other to a friendly - but secret - cross-country wilderness race. When Louise makes a naïve and possibly fatal mistake, she must reach Arnie to tell him to throw the race and save Mikhail from Stalin and Beria's brutal secret police. But the two skiers are in a world of their own, unreachable in Finland's arctic wilderness. Another masterful novel from the author of the modern classic Matterhorn, Cold Victory is a triumph.