Former Mossad agent Sam Charles has a serious problem. He has fallen for Elizabeth Fielder an agent of Russia's SVR, the successor to the KGB, while keeping her under surveillance in London and Basel, Switzerland. Unfortunately Elizabeth is held in Basel's remand prison, charged with the murder of a colleague. Sam is determined to secure her liberty - but how? Lifting her off the prison roof by helicopter is impossible and so begins a period of intense frustration for him. While visiting Poland to explore the Holocaust and his family roots he realises that he must risk his own liberty to ensure that the court knows the full circumstances of the killing: he had bugged Elizabeth's hotel room in Basel and has the tapes of the events that led to the shooting. By giving evidence in court his own liberty will be at risk but he thinks he can limit his own period of incarceration. Will this work and will anything come of his infatuation with Elizabeth? Along the way he has to sort out Sylvia Brunner, Elizabeth's defence lawyer, who is being torn apart by false "memories", planted by her therapist, of sexual abuse by her father. And what will be the outcome of Elizabeth's trial which is an important part of the story?