Stockholm, October 1962. The world is watching Cuba. Elin Vahl is listening to East Germany.
At Sweden's newly opened Radiohuset, Elin monitors foreign broadcasts for Swedish Radio's German-language service. Then a dead man speaks. The voice on a Radio Berlin International tape belongs to her brother Nils, officially dead for five years-and his message names her fianc .
What begins as a private shock becomes a contest over records, loyalties, and who gets to decide which lives can be sacrificed for national security. The deeper Elin digs into a failed 1957 intelligence operation, the less innocent any version of the story becomes: not Nils's, not her fianc 's, and not the Swedish state's.
With the Cuban Missile Crisis tightening the clock and an East German producer demanding an impossible exchange, Elin must find a way to bring her brother home without destroying the woman whose survival is bound to his disappearance.
The Stockholm Signal is a tense, atmospheric Cold War espionage novel about family loyalty, state secrecy, and the dangerous difference between protecting someone and choosing for them.