The smoldering embers of the old Cold War are reigniting around the world. A former spymaster is found murdered in his Washington apartment. Fearful the circumstances surrounding his death will reflect badly on the Agency, the management mandarins at Langley assign his passing, and body, to a bureaucratic black hole at headquarters. Forced to focus its resources on the Middle East, a Snowden battered CIA relies on a former international executive with confidential ties to the old spymaster, and the Agency itself. Reluctantly, Charlie Connelly agrees to leave his life in suburbia to find the suspected mole who murdered his friend and mentor. Connelly follows a tenuous lead to a former MI6 agent in charge of an Austrian banking operation. There, he is pointed toward Kiev and the renewal of a relationship with a disgraced CIA agent, working for Israeli intelligence. She joins in the search for the killer. The two become enmeshed in the opening stages of the Ukrainian revolt as they follow a twisting path through the Chernobyl dead zone to Tel Aviv and from there to the conflicted streets of Cairo before uncovering the killer of their friend.