Sex becomes the ultimate secret weapon in

a dazzling novel of deception and duplicity

involving two glamorous women who are

look-alikes. With The Second Lady, Irving

Wallace has written a masterful new work of

fiction that takes the reader into the hidden

corridors of power at the highest level in

Moscow, Washington, and London.

Billie Bradford, the brilliant and beautiful

wife of the President of the United States. is

on a state visit to Moscow when she is

abducted by the Soviets, and Vera Vavilova.

a superbly trained Russian undercover

agent and actress who is the First Lady s

physical double, is put in her place.

The imposter s mission is to induce the

President to reveal a U.S. secret that will

drastically tip the world balance toward

Russia. But she must move carefully,

knowing that one false move can destroy

her masquerade, whether at the breakfast

table, before the TV cameras--or in the

White House bedroom. Meanwhile. in

Moscow, the real Billie Bradford. terrified.

embarks on her own program of deception,

desperately seeking ways to escape, daringly

leading a Soviet intelligence officer astray

in the most intimate area of her married life.

an area about which the Russians could not

possibly have any information.

Two women, each playing a treacherous

game in a foreign land, each taking a

desperate gamble in the arms of the other s

lover hauntingly mirrorlike heroines

inexorably propelled toward a face-to-face

confrontation of unbearable tension and a

totally unpredictable, stunning, and

shocking climax.