In the Twinkling of an Eye

In 1986, a Ukrainian teenager loses his father and his own left eye to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, but he escapes and becomes a top-notch genetics engineer at Moscow State University. There, he is seduced into joining a well-funded new genetics institute where he hopes to develop a genetic solution (better than CRISPR) to cure his twelve-year old daughter's leukemia that is a result of her damaged genes that she inherited from his radiation exposure. But soon he learns that the Institute is actually a coverup run by the Russian intelligence service and is secretly developing advanced genetic bioweapons with the North Koreans for assassination, terror, and genocide. The Ukrainian scientist feels he must remain at the institute, however, in order to find a cure for his dying daughter.

Parallel to this story, a young North Korean girl escapes to South Korea via a North Korean attack tunnel beneath the DMZ. Her father, the North Korean military mining engineer who designed the tunnel, dies during the attempt, and she loses her younger brother with whom she was escaping. She is adopted by a Korean-American US military officer and grows up to be an FBI special agent devoted to battling WMD, who secretly recruits the Ukrainian scientist.

In the course of their work, the FBI agent equips the Ukrainian scientist with a new glass eye with microelectronics on the nano scale that enables him to record covertly everything he sees and hears and transmit his intelligence to her daily through one of his daughter's dolls that has advanced artificial intelligence. It is perfect revenge for a character, who has lost his eye as a teenager, is scarred for life and has lost his beloved father due to Soviet incompetence at Chernobyl. The doll is virtually sentient and is a stand-in for the female FBI agent whom she resembles. In so doing, the agent overcomes the biggest obstacles that spies traditionally face: safely communicating frequently with their case officer for operational guidance and psychological reinforcement and transmitting critical information in a timely fashion.

Together, the scientist and the FBI agent must prevent Russia and North Korea from using the bioweapons for assassination and mass murder of regime opponents.