New York art expert Colin Grant is sent to Vienna and bid on a priceless Old Master on behalf of a Texan millionaire. No sooner has Grant landed in Austria than his seemingly simple assignment turns into a nightmare, as he finds himself at the center of a conspiracy to unleash a wave of international terrorism.

Chuck Kelso is an idealist. When he steals a top-secret NATO memorandum, he only intends to leak it to the press; but it is soon in the hands of a Russian agent, a man who has spent nine years quietly working himself into the fabric of Washington society. Within hours it has reached the KGB, and the CIA’s top man in Moscow has had his cover blown. For British agent Tony Lawton, hunting down the Russian operative—the "agent in place"—is a welcome challenge. But for Chuck’s brother, the journalist Tom Kelso, and his beautiful wife, Thea, the affair has unleashed a very special terror.

Under the Mediterranean sun, a drama begins in a café in Málaga. For Ian Ferrier, an employee of the United States Space Agency on holiday to visit his old friend Jeff Reid, it means the startling discovery that Reid is not just a wine exporter, but rather engaged in smuggling communist defectors to the West. Events take a turn for the worse when Ferrier, a stranger to the deadly world of espionage, must take sole charge of a high-ranking KGB agent. Alone in an frighteningly alien landscape, he can afford no mistakes when choosing whom to trust …

When journalist Karen Cornell is invited to a peace conference in Prague, she only goes on the understanding that she will be granted a valuable interview. Instead she finds herself chosen for a more hazardous task: carrying top-secret documents from a potential Czech defector back to Washington. With the papers safely in the hands of Peter Bristow, the one CIA man Karen can trust, she is sure her part in the drama is over, but soon she is pulled into an astonishing web of blackmail, assassination and treason at the highest level. 

While carrying out research in Paris, American historian John Craig is surprised when he runs into his old college professor. Sussman is a worried man. A survivor of Auschwitz, he in shock, having seen and been seen by one of the Nazis who tortured him in the camp. But SS Colonel Berg has been dead for 10 years—or has he? Before Craig can help solve the riddle, Sussman is found dead, and Craig is being questioned by the police. As various international organizations are drawn into the hunt for Sussman’s killer, he realizes the ex-Nazi is far more than just a wanted war criminal.