A summer trip to Paris in 1976the toss of a strange challenge coinand the offer to join a clandestine government programthat's what led Isobelle Wylie on an unforgettable journey into the dangerous world of espionage, love, and betrayal.
Even her family never knew about the secret life she lived. She was covertly trained to shadow national security threats as a member of the CIA's Pantomime Team. Their main target? The KGB's Eighth Chief Directorate, whose illegals used dirty tricks and coercion to gain access to America's highly sensitive, very classified communications, equipment, and technology.
Forty-five years later, she is attacked in a park in Maryland, savagely beaten and left for dead. Was it just a random encounter with a brutal assailant, or something far more sinister? Something to do with the current state of national security?
Her nephew, Will Redfern, is quickly drawn into the intrigue when he opens the professional safe in her condo. As he reads her journals and manuscript, he realizes that the enemy she's been fighting for decades is still actively hunting for the Pantomime Team. Why is Moscow so worried about what Belle and her fellow shadows know about those old spy cells?
Desperate for answers, Will tracks down a man his aunt calls "MacGuyver". As the two men search for Belle's assailant, they uncover a heinous plot that has its roots deep inside Moscow and the old KGB First Directorate, where President Vladimir Putin served as a KGB officer. Did Putin reactivate the old terror networks once handled by the KGB in order to get inside America's present day national security?