Telefon

In the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union seeds a vast network of long-term sleeper agents hidden across the United States. They are brainwashed to forget their true allegiance and can only be activated by a line from the Robert Frost poem 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening', followed by the agent's real first name. The mission is to sabotage vital civil and military infrastructure if war ever looms.

More than twenty years pass and détente begins to reshape the geopolitical landscape. The sleeper network remains hidden, ready to be triggered only by the Frost line and a name, awaiting a conflict that might never come. The film frames this period as a tense quiet before a possible storm.

Nikolai Dalchimsky travels to the United States carrying the Telefon Book, which contains the names, addresses, and numbers of all sleeper agents. He begins activating them one by one, triggering a wave of covert sabotage. This marks the first active breach of the dormant network.

As agents awaken, facilities once deemed crucial begin to explode or suffer disruption, catching officials off guard. The attacks are sudden and seemingly unconnected, making it hard to identify a pattern or motive. The consequences strain American civil and military infrastructure.

U.S. counterintelligence scrambles to explain the unconnected sabotage as emotions run high and suspects proliferate. The public and government alike grow anxious as the true nature of the threat remains buried. The lock on the network appears to be slipping.

Rooted in secrecy, the KGB keeps its leaders in the dark about its own failures while selecting Major Grigori Borzov to quietly track down Dalchimsky. Borzov has the aid of Barbara, the sleeper agent embedded in America who becomes his sole local contact. The arrangement foreshadows a tense, delicate game between loyalists on both sides.

Borzov manages to memorize the contents of the only other copy of the Telefon Book, a critical safeguard that could reveal every active agent. He is dispatched to locate and neutralize Dalchimsky without alerting political leadership. The weight of this mission underscores the personal risk involved in the covert war.

Borzov untangles Dalchimsky's pattern: he selects targets by the initial letters of American hometowns and writes his sabotage into the map of the country. He anticipates the next move and pursues Dalchimsky until he is killed. The revelation marks a rare victory for the counterintelligence side.

Barbara reveals she is a double agent for America and carries orders from the KGB to assassinate Borzov after he succeeds. She discloses this to her American superior, Sandburg, who responds by instructing her to eliminate Borzov to maintain KGB trust. The web of loyalties becomes dangerously tangled.

Despite conflicting orders, Barbara falls for Borzov and informs him of her true situation. Instead of betraying him, they choose to join forces, subverting the will of both sides. They decide to use the remaining Telefon agents as leverage to protect themselves.

Barbara and Borzov threaten to reveal the remaining agents to both sides, forcing them to back off and leave the couple alone. The threat of exposure shifts the balance of power and creates a dangerous, fragile peace. Both sides fear the public fallout more than direct confrontation.

With the superpowers deterred, the two agents secure a fragile peace by keeping the Telefon network in check. The Telefon Book remains a dangerous asset, a memory that could reignite conflict if mishandled. The film closes on an uneasy, uncertain note about the future of this hidden balance.