Who is Lena? What is she up to? Does she even know her mission? Setting out from an East Berlin neighborhood that is home to former dignitaries, she goes about passing out small, innocent-seeming gifts from Budapest to Transylvania to Kiev. She crosses the Danube delta, the Black Sea, Anatolia, and the Aleppo bazaar. Each time, she crosses borders incognito, claiming to have nothing to declare. A journey at once timeless and inextricable from the great issues of our age, "Lena" combines the intimacy dear to André Juillard and Pierre Christin's predilection for vast geopolitical canvases.

Lena thought she'd paid her dues to the French secret service. She'd gone undercover as their courier in order to avenge her son and husband, both killed in a terrorist attack. And now she has a new life in Australia. A new family. So why does she still feel so hollow inside? Lena finds herself reluctantly drawn back into the world of international espionage, this time as a tutor to Islamist suicide bombers at a remote training camp in the Georgian desert. Three girls, in each of whom she sees something of herself. But will it be enough to bring her to save them?

A meeting of elite diplomats. A snowy resort in an undisclosed location. A secure communications room staffed by private security. Lena's latest adventure finds her ostensibly heading a small hospitality staff that caters to the needs of VIPs attending a top-secret summit. What better way to suss out secrets than by blending into the woodwork? In this locked-room atmosphere, egos clash and history outs its old grudges. For the issue at stake is none other than the fate of the Middle East, again to be divided by meddling powers. And these days of routine, ennui, luxury, and leisure may hide a more insidious threat...