Recalled to Washington and riding an editor's desk, Colin Burke itches to be back in Russia. A friend's murder is hardly the cause he would have wished for, but he picks up his reporter's notebook again, and heads for St. Petersburg. As the threads of the murder seem increasingly to lead to the Hermitage—one of the world's great museums—he may be out of his depth. Someone seems to have been planning to steal some of the museum's priceless paintings, and they are more than willing to kill again to complete the heist.