Ambrose Knight—a highly decorated CIA case officer, top spy recruiter, and member of The Guild—is suspected of espionage and treated as a pariah by many Agency colleagues and friends. After several months of purgatory, he's exonerated when another case officer's treachery is revealed. Embittered by the accusations and Agency racial discrimination due to his African American ethnicity, Knight volunteers to the Russian intelligence service and begins living a double life.

"The Red Queen", a senior female FBI agent who heads the CIA's Counterespionage Group (the mole hunters), claims that Knight is in fact still a spy and has been all along, his exoneration notwithstanding. She's relentless in her sociopathic pursuit, clashes bitterly with Knight's few allies, and has her own dark secrets to conceal. Joining the hunt is Brian Bannock (from "Living Lies"), now head of CIA Counterintelligence, who has suspected for several years that CIA has harbored serious Russian penetrations. Staring at him across the human chessboard is his archenemy, SVR Major General Dmitri Grishin (ret.), who is desperate to protect vital Kremlin interests and a highly placed mole in the U.S. government. Bannock must use all his guile to flush out the spy who corrodes from within.