In 2005, Charles Foster is suffering setbacks both personal and professional: he's been pulled from jet-setting overseas duties and stuffed behind a lectern in a rust belt river-city town--where his wife and child have left him to return to the alabaster and cordials of Washington, DC. When he receives a pet assignment and an inevitable personal challenge, he discovers he may make the worst of them both. Edmund LeFrance is a habitual gambler and itinerant hit man whose employer accepts a job from a CIA agent--it's a simple fix that could have long-term implications.Hoyt Gamlin is retired SAS from working-class Britain. A missing compatriot draws him from sunny Los Angeles into the search--and his characteristic aggression.And Marek Hussar is a recent arrival--seemingly a businessman with little furniture and a wealth of kit--an eccentric and enigmatic foreign national whose motions and motivations interleave and unfold beside Foster, LeFrance, and Gamlin, as they each move to discover, subvert, and survive the intentions of the other.