Can a rose be used to deceive? Perhaps there are possibilities if the rose acts as cover for armament shipments, or the code for conveying a message. In this fast-paced thriller set in Cold War Europe in 1965, Olga Diederich, a young female Stasi assassin, escapes from a secret CIA prison in Sardinia and begins her search for the woman who assumed her place as a Soviet agent. Olga aims to annihilate the woman and reinstate herself back into the communist intelligence machine. Previously in Rome, while Olga languishes in a cell, the CIA has stumbled upon a young American woman with exceptional linguistic skills, but even more astonishing is her uncanny resemblance to the assassin. The most extraordinary aspect of this CIA mole, however, is that she is a nun Sister Gilmary, now in Luxembourg, assumes a new role as the Stasi agent in order to deceive the Soviets about where NATO's secret Gladio weapons are stored. After Olga figures out where her double operates and arrives in Luxembourg, she concocts a scheme to kill her. Meanwhile, another Stasi spy sent from East Berlin appears in Luxembourg with orders to build communist cells among the migrant laborers. Eventually, Olga and he each think they have discovered the location of the hidden NATO weapons, and each wants to be the first to deliver this information to their Stasi superiors. In the end, who deceives whom? Does the humble rose become unmasked? Does Gilmary survive? This novel is the sequel to CASTING A SHADOW OVER ROME, the first Sister Gilmary thriller.