Captain Charles Stanek, weary OSS veteran of the war against Nazi Germany, is ordered on a priority mission to French Indochina to investigate the death of operative Rolly Dixon, killed on the streets of Saigon days earlier. The time is late-September 1945 and the stage for another bloody struggle for power is set. Quickly upon his arrival in Saigon, Stanek is engulfed in subterfuge by an international cast of characters. He meets and loves the exotic but dangerous Madame Thieu. He learns that others beside Viet Minh leader Ong Tran have motives for killing Dixon. Stanek picks up a trail of death and diamonds that takes him from the streets of Saigon northward to DaLat and, ultimately, to HaNoi, where he is pitted against Russian KGB agents tracking a master spy code-named Rasputin. But, before Stanek can complete his mission, he is forced to confront his memories - his ghosts of war.
