In 1949, a West German nightclub owner embarks on a risky quest behind the Iron Curtain to save his kidnapped American brother but soon gets entangled in a treacherous mission to free a US scientist believed to be in Soviet captivity.

1949: Max Kaspar, a former actor with a tragic wartime past, now a Munich nightclub owner and sometime helper for the early CIA, discovers that his brother Harry, a supposed official with the Marshall Plan, has been kidnapped while on an operation behind the Iron Curtain to rescue a prominent American scientist. Max resolves to locate his brother at all costs, but Harry soon goes rogue, refusing to return to the fold.

Maxs treacherous quest takes him first to Vienna then ever deeper into Soviet territory, from Prague to Soviet East Germany to Communist Poland. Along the way, equally dogged operators join the pursuit, each with their own secret angles. Harrys former lover Katarina is now working for the Israelis. Former Nazi Hartmut Dietz, who once betrayed Max before fleeing East, has made himself a top player in the fledgling East German intelligence apparatus. And Harrys target, the American scientist Stanley Samaras, may not be the paragon Harry had believed him to be. In the end theres only one way out.