British spy Robert Harland ended his career in an Austrian hospital, after being tortured by Czech security agents in the last days of the communist regime. Twelve years he works for the U.N., but when his plane crashes at La Guardia airport in New York and Harland is the only survivor, it looks like he is being targeted. It is soon clear to Harland that the answers are to be found in a past which he has desperately tried to forget. And now the crash has thrown him back into a world of intrigue and mistrust, to his youth, and a life-changing love affair.