Trapped in the USSR
 Richard Duffy promised Stephen an uneventful week when the latter's parents went for a week-long trip to Clearwater, Florida, for business. Reasoning if they were not home, they would not receive emergency phone calls or visitors asking for help, the uncle-nephew duo went out for dinner. Yet barely a block from their residence, they were surrounded by 4 heavy-set men who forced them into a limousine, driven directly to an airport runway and made to board a waiting plane, bypassing all normal customs, immigration and security channels. They were flown to Estonia, and transferred to a submarine where a past adversary of Richard, Igor Borisov of the KGB, forced Richard to carry out a secret investigation into a plot by Soviet officials in the highest circle. Igor selected Richard because he could trust few people, and one of his own reliable men had been killed recently. In order to get himself and Stephen safely home, Richard had to agree, and even had to work with the beautiful Natasha Golovina whom Richard had outmanoeuvred in the past in Paris. To make things worse, Stephen had to mention Michelle LeBlanc whom he met in the previous story Pursuit of the Deadly Diamonds, arousing Natasha's jealousy. Convinced too that the plot Igor was facing was a threat to his own country and the world as a whole, they undertook feverish trips across the USSR, from Leningrad, to Moscow, to Tashkent, Bratsk, and finally, Odessa. Their assignment was to steal vital documents kept by five men identified as being chief conspirators in the plot.