A Tom Clancy-type international thriller, this book is the story of the theft of a nuclear warhead which, by treaty, is not supposed to exist; the discovery of the theft threatens to expose an international conspiracy that could trigger a nuclear holocaust. On the other hand, failing to recover the warhead might lead to nuclear terrorism. For what seemed good political reasons, shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia and the U.S. allowed newly independent Ukraine to secretly retain Soviet tactical nuclear warheads in violation of the START arms reduction treaty. When Anatoly Kubitsky, ex-KGB agent, discovers that one of these weapons is missing, the Ukraine government refuses to acknowledge the theft. His conscience impels him to track down the warhead but soon finds himself branded a criminal and narrowly escapes assassins. On the run, Kubitsky alerts Dan Stern, Assistant Director CIA, an old Cold War adversary. Stern finds that the U.S. too, is reluctant to acknowledge the theft of a Ukraine Nuclear warhead, thereby exposing the treaty violation conspiracy. When Stern insists on pursuing the truth, he too becomes the target of assassins. A midnight phone call from Tatiana Romanov, a brave young Ukrainian woman, reveals a plot to detonate the warhead somewhere in Russia. If successful, war between Russia and the Ukraine seems inevitable = which would likely draw in the US. Can Kubitsky and Stern - both fugitives from their own governments - stop the conspirators or will the first nuclear war envelop the world?