While photographing birds at dawn, maverick risk-taker and onetime star professor Fritz Tullis sights a plane with his telephoto lens as it touches down on an airstrip across the bay. It is an open secret that this area, with its multitude of hidden waterways, is becoming a hub for illegal arms and drug trafficking. Three people emerge from the plane. As Fritz watches, two of them start arguing. Suddenly without warning, one shoots the other. The killer and his accomplice then throw the body into the plane and take off. Fritz learns that the airstrip belongs to a wealthy and elusive man with a long history of connections to the CIA. A few days later, he discovers that the victim, whose body turns up a hundred miles away, was a high-ranking foreign diplomat. Before he knows it, against his better judgement, Fritz is digging for the truth-and, complicating his life even further, becomes romantically entangled with an attractive Harvard ornithologist who has discovered his private sanctuary. Fritz is about to learn how dangerous being involved can be. For as his quiet life becomes more complex, people-including some who are near and dear-start to die. And as he adds these possible murders to the one he personally witnessed, Fritz senses that he himself is being scrutinised through a telescopic lens, and that someone, somewhere is plotting his death.