She's on the glinting edge of East-West confrontation, a beautiful and accomplished scholar who has suddenly become the new US ambassador to an Iron Curtain country, a woman who is about to dramatically change the course of world events - if she lives. For Mary Ashley has been marked for death by the world's most proficient and mysterious assassin, and plunged into a nightmare of espionage, kidnapping and terror. Only two people - both powerfully attractive and ultimately enigmatic men - can offer her help. But soon she comes to believe that one of them is out to kill her.  'If you want a novel you simply cannot put down, go to Sheldon.' NEW YORK DAILY NEWS