It is late 1955. From tumultuous Nicosia, snooping US Navy crews regularly taunt the Soviet giant with their "Boomerang" surveillance flights north into the "Pond" - the Black Sea. Nasser is in power in Egypt, Israel is independent, and Great Britain is retrenching her Middle East forces to newly strategic Cyprus. There, at the center of waning British influence, these flights superimpose Cold War tensions on the brittle politics of the region, while in Washington, they fuel inter-service rivalries and stir up memories and paybacks long overdue.Against a backdrop of seething Cypriot tensions and growing terrorism, one American crew bravely pursues an important intelligence catch, and their story spins out against the unusual ethical and romantic conflict their pilot faces as he grapples with the drive to protect his men and, at the same time, perform his top secret mission. We watch the "Beast," the specialized American surveillance aircraft, take center stage in the lives of its crew in their adventures on a dark night in a strange part of the world. Cypriot patriots and Cold Warriors, the British and (as the alluring Czech spy-for-hire describes them) the "not so British," churn toward a showdown engineered by a crafty American intelligence master. Finally, we watch as an American Admiral and a British Field Marshall - both historical personages - maneuver to insure that greater values are preserved as they cope with the fallout from the highly charged intersection of their national interests.