Maine schoolteacher Nicola Ward receives a mysterious trunk arrives from Shanghai, filled with family papers, photographs, and several pieces of priceless Russian art. To authenticate the art and translate the diary bundled with it, Nicola hires Neil Walker, a burnt-out former CIA operative. Soon Nicola starts receiving death threats clearly connected with the contents of the trunk. The Russian collection seems to identify Nicola as the heir to the Romanov throne, and worse, something in her family papers point to a Soviet mole in the U.S. government.