In 1949, Frank Weeks, blue-eyed boy of the newly formed CIA, was exposed as a Communist spy and vanished behind the Iron Curtain. Now, twelve years later, he has written his memoirs, and has asked his brother Simon, a New York publisher, to travel to Moscow to edit the manuscript. It is a reunion Simon both dreads and longs for. The book is sure to be filled with mischief and misinformation, Frank's motives suspect, and the CIA hostile. But the chance to see his adored older brother proves irresistible.

And at first Frank is still Frank — the same charm, the same jokes, the same bond of affection that transcends ideology. Then Simon begins to glimpse another Frank, still capable of deceit. He is pulled into Frank’s twilight world, caught between the KGB and the CIA in a fatal scheme that pits brother against brother, like scorpions in a bottle, safe unless one of them attacks. And one always does.

Defectors is the gripping story of a family torn apart by divided loyalties. It also reveals the city of Moscow at the height of the Cold War — and the community of African and British defectors forced to make it their home, closely monitored by the KGB, granted special privileges but never trusted, traitors who managed to escape one prison only to find themselves locked firmly in another.