Farewell to Russia - Richard Hugo

Written before chernobyl,this story concerns a nuclear accident in a power station in the volga basin. 5 kilograms of plutonium nitrate are released into a cooling lake,an amount which even when massively diluted is enough to kill every human being in the entire river basin. The winter freeze is keeping the lake bottled up,but the inexorable clock is running towardsthe spring thaw. There is only one company in the world which has the technology to separate the plutonium from the water and that is an american subsidiary of an ailing british chemical giant. The technology is,of course,embargoed under the cocom rules. The focus is on politics. In moscow the footwork is between the kgb and the army as the later is responsible for the nuclear power programme. Major kirov is the civilised and subtle kgb officer who is trying to steer through this minefield while simultaneously organising the import of the forbidden. In london the politics revolve around george twist who sets up a dummy organisation in finland to try to save himself and his company. 24/8/87--50000x31px$3.99(40000x34p). A format.480pp. UK INDIVIDUAL PROMTN