After her father is murdered by the Gestapo for protesting Action T4, she helps her friends- who are German Resistance members- transmit vital battle plans to the Soviet Union.

Erik is initially a firm supporter of the Nazi regime and serves in the German Army as a medical orderly in the invasions of France and Russia.

Lloyd Williams - the son of Welsh MP Ethel Leckwith and the bastard of Earl Fitzherbert (and therefore a cousin of Carla and Erik, whom he met in Berlin).

He quickly rises amid the bureaucracy of Washington D.C. during World War II and becomes an observer for the government on the Manhattan Project, the development of the nuclear bomb.

During World War II, Greg discovers he has a son, Georgy, conceived during his earlier romance with a young African-American actress, Jacky Jakes.

He provides for the child's upbringing and education, becoming deeply attached to Georgy - which might create an impediment to his plans to embark on a political career in the Republican Party.

An intelligence officer for the Red Army, Vladimir is the handler for several Soviet espionage cells in Germany and the U.S., including that of Carla and Werner.

He fights in the Spanish Civil War and in the Battle of Moscow, and later manages to obtain covert intelligence on U.S. development of the nuclear bomb.

Vladimir romances a beautiful physicist named Zoya, deeply involved in the Soviet Nuclear Program, and later marries and starts a family with her after the war.

He is sent home wounded, and eventually begins a relationship with Bella Hernandez, a young Hispanic woman he met while training in Britain.

The novel also sets the stage for the decades to follow with reference to interracial and homosexual relationships, the creation of the United Nations, the sexual revolution, and the growth of the communist Eastern Bloc.