The book begins with Dana Evans returning from Sarajevo with an armless adoptee, Kemal after filming war coverage for three months.

Dana decides to set out to find why anybody would want to kill the family well known for its kindness and contributions to charity (all of Gary's relatives had died in suspicious circumstances one at a time before him).

After several failed attempts to contact her, Sinisi finally agrees to meet Dana after having the notion that someone is watching her.

At the same time, Jeff is forced to go visit his ex-wife, who has breast cancer, thus Dana employs a nanny to look after Kemal.

Dana eventually comes to Russia, where she finds the pen she'd been given by her friends was a tracking device and destroys it and meets a military official named Sasha Shdandoff.

After disguising Dana as a prostitute and going in with her, Sasha explains that Krasnoyarsk-26 exists for the sole purpose of creating plutonium, the key ingredient in nuclear weapons.

Dana is then forced into a cat-and-mouse chase from Russia to the United States, finding out that several people that she trusts are working to kill her.