Description

In 1972, Boris Ledev, a naive young man with bi-polar issues, enters an art gallery in Leningrad with the intent to buy a piece of abstract art to impress his girlfriend. The art is a replica of Composition IV, a Kandinsky painting, which also serves as a medium for the drop of a microdot containing encrypted clandestine data from a CIA mole. The dot contains code about a new submarine and how an aging Soviet Admiral plans to use it to threaten the West. Unwittingly, Boris puts himself in a precarious position between the gallery's owner, a NATO operative who has just accepted the drop, and a brutal KGB agent, who is about to pounce. Boris, a hack writer from Moscow, persuades the owner to sell it. The owner, in a dilemma, agrees to the sale to get the painting out of his gallery and away from the KGB. However, Boris grabs the art and disappears. The chase was on. The KGB agent pursues Boris but fails to find him. The angry KGB agent returns to the gallery with the conviction that its owner and Boris are working together. He punishes him but gets no information about Boris' identity. Untrained and alone in Russia, the owner is forced to try to recover the painting. It is both vital to NATO and proof that he's engaged in espionage. The KGB agent shadows Xavier to Moscow. On its streets, a deadly cat and mouse game plays out. NATO must get the data and Russia must recapture it -- there is no middle ground.