Berlin, 1989. Protests across East Germany threaten the Iron Curtain and Communism is the ill man of Europe. Anne Simpson, an American who works as a translator at the Joint Operations Refugee Committee, thinks she is in a normal marriage with a charming East German. But then her husband disappears and the CIA and Western German intelligence arrive at her door. She had been targeted by the Matchmaker—a high-level East German counterintelligence officer who runs a network of Stasi agents.

Alex Matthews thought he had left it all behind: his CIA career, the viper's den of bureaucracy at headquarters, the deceits of the cat-and-mouse game of double agents, and the sudden trips to Russia, which poisoned his marriage and made him an absentee husband and father, with tragic results. But then the Director came asking for a favor. Something that only Alex could do because it involved the asset Byron—a Russian agent whom Alex had recruited.

Moscow, 1985. The Soviet Union and its communist regime are in the last stages of decline, but remain opaque to the rest of the world—and still very dangerous. In this ever-shifting landscape, a senior KGB officer—code name GAMBIT—has approached the CIA Moscow Station chief with top secret military weapons intelligence and asked to be exfiltrated. GAMBIT demands that his handler be a former CIA officer, Alex Garin, a former KGB officer who defected to the American side. The CIA had never successfully exfiltrated a KGB officer from Moscow, and the top brass do not trust Garin.

Lebanon, 2006. The Israel–Hezbollah war is tearing Beirut apart and the country is on the brink of chaos. The CIA and Mossad are targeting a reclusive Hezbollah terrorist. They turn to young Lebanese-American CIA agent, Analise, who has the perfect plan. However, Analise begins to suspect that Mossad has a motive of its own. She alerts the agency but their response is for her to drop it. Analise is now the target and there is no one she can trust.

This novel by acclaimed espionage author Paul Vidich explores the dark side of intelligence, when a CIA officer delves into a cold case from the 1950s - with fatal consequences.