1940. American Stephen Metcalfe is a minor asset in the US's secret intelligence forces in Europe. Through a wild twist of fate, he must instigate a bold plan that may be the only hope for what remains of the free world. Now he must travel to wartime Moscow to find, and possibly betray, a former lover...

1991. The Communist empire is on the verge of oblivion, and a coup is being planned by a powerful new cabal. Stephen Metcalfe, now a retired ambassador, must return to Moscow and finally reveal a secret that has haunted him since the fall of Berlin... a secret that might just avert a global cataclysm.

Robert Ludlum was the author of twenty-one novels, each a New York Times bestseller. There are more than 210 million of his books in print, and they have been translated into thirty-two languages. In addition to the Jason Bourne series—The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum—he was the author of The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Chancellor Manuscript, and The Apocalypse Watch, among many others. Mr. Ludlum passed away in March, 2001.