After 25 checkered years with the CIA, a brilliant but dissipated spy has delusional expectations for a promotion to Langley. Instead, when he finds himself banished to a one-man "field office" in San Francisco, he retaliates by indulging himself - at CIA expense - on all the finest cuisine the region has to offer, from suckling pig terrine in Union Square to barbecued octopus in Chinatown to braised pork cheek and Japanese sea urchin in Napa Valley. In the process, he nimbly outwits hostile foreign operatives, fends off parsimonious bureaucrats in Langley, and wriggles out of a murder frame-up, all while maintaining a busy schedule of golf, massages, wine auctions, and dermal peels.