The murder of a Fulbright scholar puts David Ames, a diplomat at the U.S. Embassy Berlin, in pursuit of neo-Nazi killers. But he becomes instead the prey - entrapped by competing intelligence services in their pursuit of smuggled Nazi art and gold. The action swiftly moves from Dresden's Elbe River promenade to Berlin's Unter den Linden and ends in a forgotten Hitler bunker beneath a castle in Poland's Sudety Mountains. At stake is David's diplomatic career as he struggles to escape a web of blackmail and political payoffs.