Behind Harry Strand is a career in American intelligence he wishes he could forget and a wife, killed in an automobile accident, he can't stop mourning. In spite of his past, Harry has managed to start a new career as a successful art dealer in Houston. Then Mara Song enters his life, sharing the lap pool of an exclusive club where Harry swims alone every morning. For weeks they swim together, day after day, never speaking, never meeting, until she disappears. A month later Mara walks into his office with a business proposition: help her sell an extraordinary portfolio of drawings by modern masters. The allure of the cache and of Mara herself is something he can't resist. Even after the discovery. Walking into Mara's home one day, he notices her television is on, a videocassette visible in the VCR slot. When he pushes it in, he finds himself watching a nighttime surveillance tape of a chase scene - and, with heart-wrenching horror, witnessing his wife's final, terrifying moments as her car is forced off a country road. He knows only too well who is responsible for her death. The cold war may be over, but Harry's war has just begun.