Its 1944, World War II is in its final stages and Josef Stalin should be content; the incipient conquest of almost half of Europe will erect a virtually impregnable barrier around Russia. But the American development of the atomic bomb threatens to make this military achievement irrelevant. Since the U.S.S.R. lacks the uranium necessary to match American nuclear progress on its own, Stalin decides his country must hijack some from the loosely guarded shipments from Oak Ridge, Tenn. A top Soviet planner invents a scheme for stealing the uranium and throwing the blame on the Germans. The Russians can then pretend that they have the capacity to make atomic weapons. They will explode one of their two bombs, the Americans wont realize they have only one left, and strategic parity will be restored by the threat. The German and Russian fifth columnists are the most sympathetic characters in this unusual fiction about espionage derring-do; their American opponents mostly come off as boobs