Detective Richard Jax was never good at history--but, after years as a cop, he is about to get the lesson of his life. Ambushed and dying on a stakeout, he's saved by Captain Patrick "Trick" McCall--the ghost of a World War II OSS agent. Trick has been waiting since 1944 for a chance to solve his own murder. Soon Jax is a suspect in a string of murders--murders linked to smuggling refugees out of the Middle East--a plot similar to the World War II OSS operation that brought scientists out of war-torn Europe. With the aid of a beautiful and intelligent historian, Dr. Alex Vouros, Jax and Trick unravel a seventy-year-old plot that began with Trick's murder in 1944. Could the World War II mastermind, code named Harriet, be alive and up to old games? Is history repeating itself?

Together, Jax and Trick hunt for the link between their pasts--confronted by some of Washington's elite and one provocative, alluring French Underground agent, Abrielle Chanoux. Somewhere in Trick's memories is a traitor. That traitor killed him. That traitor is killing again. Who framed Jax and who wants Trick's secret to remain secret? The answer may be, who doesn't?