Claire Saylor

West Berlin, 1979. Helen Abell oversees the CIA's network of safe houses, rare havens for field agents and case officers amidst the dangerous milieu of a city in the grips of the Cold War. Helen's world is upended when, during her routine inspection of an agency property, she overhears a meeting between two unfamiliar people speaking a coded language that hints at shadowy realities far beyond her comprehension. Before the day is out, she witnesses a second unauthorized encounter, one that will place her in the sight lines of the most ruthless and powerful man at the agency. Her attempts to expose the dark truths about what she has witnessed will bring about repercussions that reach across decades and continents into the present day, when, in a farm town in Maryland, a young man is arrested for the double murder of his parents, and his sister takes it upon herself to find out why he did it.

When CIA agent Claire Saylor is told she'll be going undercover to pose as the dowdy wife of a stuffy academic who has posited a controversial new interpretation of the Quran's promise to martyrs, she assumes the job is a punishment for past unorthodox behavior. But when she discovers her team leader is Paul Bridger, another maverick within the Agency, she realizes that the mission may be more interesting than meets the eye-and not just for professional reasons. At the same time, in Hamburg, Mahmoud, a recent Moroccan émigré, begins to fall under the sway of a group of radicals at his local Mosque. As his commitment to his new friends deepens, he finds himself torn between his obligations to them and the feelings he's developing toward a beautiful westernized Muslim woman. Their lives intertwine as Claire learns the truth about the mission in Hamburg and as Mahmoud's relationship with the radicals pulls him into dangerous waters. And they both soon realize-but is it too late?-that the consequences of their actions could well determine the very future of the United States.