In the novel, Court Gentry must outwit his former fellow student from a secret assassination program in the past, who has essentially the same skills as him and has been directed to terminate him.

[1][2] Court Gentry goes to the town of Ushkovo in Russia to assassinate Gregor Sidorenko, a Russian crime boss and his former handler who wants him killed after a double cross from an operation in Sudan.

Unbeknownst to Gentry, an American private contractor agency, Townsend Government Services, has been tracking him across Europe for a while and has found him while surveilling Sidorenko's house at the time of his assassination.

Director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service Denny Carmichael visits the Townsend House and berates Babbitt for the failed operation in Tallinn.

Meanwhile, Russ goes to an Iranian intelligence outpost in Beirut, Lebanon and uses Court's identity as the Gray Man, hoping to score a contract job from the Quds Force, Iran's special forces unit, to assassinate the prime minister of Israel Ehud Kalb, who was seen as a threat to their country over oil interests, in the process setting up Court as the fall guy.

The Iranian intelligence officer present, Ali Hussein, was initially skeptical of his willingness to do such an operation, but Russ makes them propose a counteroffer to him: assassinate any public figure who is seen to Iran as a problem.

Hussein accepts his suggestion, and gives him his first target: Amir Zarini, a filmmaker whose films have insulted the Iranian government by blaspheming Islam.

This prompts Mossad intelligence agent Ruth Ettinger to be called in by the CIA and later, the Townsend House for the three agencies to coordinate in tracking down Gentry before he is supposed to kill the Israeli PM.

An intrepid operative, Ettinger surmises that it is not Gentry's style to undertake a hit on a head of state, which was dismissed by the Townsend House as over the motive of money.

Later that early morning, another strike team has been dispatched by Townsend House to Stockholm to find and kill Gentry in his supposed hideaway.

Still embittered by her Mossad op gone awry in Rome the previous year, Ruth opposes the immediate action, implying on the collateral damage likely to be inflicted, but the strike team and their boss Babbitt dismiss her.

Meanwhile, in Nice, France, Russ goes forward with his assassination of filmmaker Amir Zarini while he was in a convoy, aiming to make it look like a Gray Man op.

He hastily escapes and calls Hussein, who tells him that they are still not convinced that he is the Gray Man, but gives him one more task: to describe the details of a massacre that happened in an airport in Kiev, Ukraine years ago, which later became an urban legend and was thought by many to be Gentry's work because of the perfect execution of the killings but was not proven.

In an exchange of information which provides that Court will tell him about the Kiev op, Russ warns him that he is also being hunted by the Mossad, and that the girl who has been talking to him in the bar is one of them.

The strike team is immediately dispatched there, and Babbitt tells Russ to stand down from the hunt because of his conflicting account of what happened in Tallinn.

Ruth has been embittered by the death of her colleague and later calls her boss, Yanis Alvey, to tell him everything, and he orders her to stand down from the operation, but she presses on.

Angry again at Gentry for him complicating his operation, Russ decides to rush the assassination job by going to Brussels, Belgium, where the Israeli PM is going for the next day to pay his respects at a cemetery.

Carmichael later tells Babbitt that they intend to use the prime minister as bait for Dead Eye to kill Gentry, in order to prevent blame from going to the CIA.

Meanwhile, Gentry and Ruth try to find a boat to take them to Copenhagen on their way to Brussels, but they were spotted by the Townsend strike team and their drone.

Suddenly, having cut off his restraints, Russ immediately kills some of the strike team and then Ruth, then holds Babbitt at gunpoint in order for him to escape and continue with his assassination job.

There, he receives a call from the recuperating Alvey, thanking him for his efforts in thwarting the assassination plot against the Israeli prime minister.

Weeks later, Gentry is in Washington, D.C., for the first time since the CIA put a shoot-on-sight order on him years ago, now tailing Babbitt, who by now is trying to make amends with Carmichael after the failed operation.

It's become the most interesting part of the entire writing process for me ... the people I've met in the past three years, working with Tom Clancy.