Still recovering from his last mission, Quiller is both annoyed and intrigued when the Chief of Operations at the London Bureau asks him to rescue a fellow field executive, Shapiro, who came out maimed from Moscow's notorious Lubyanka Prison. Now Shapiro seems to have been abducted from Germany by the KGB.
Things start to go wrong immediately, as the truck carrying Quiller across the border into Russia is sabotaged, and not long after he arrives in Moscow, he is taken to Lubyanka Prison. Subsequent to his escape Quiller continues his hunt for the fellow agent. What he finds reveals a level of treachery unsuspected, and as the stakes are raised, as Quiller is in a race with time to stop an incident that could lead to World War III.
