Lisa, an operative of the CIA, awakens in a military hospital in D.C. remembering nothing of her escape from a Russian gulag in the Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan, nor crossing into the Shah’s Iran, nor anything else from her prior life. Caroline, her best friend from CIA training, whom Lisa also doesn’t remember, informs her that she is not safe dawdling around a hospital. An as yet unidentified CIA mole, who three years earlier caused the Russians to her arrest and subsequent incarcerate her, must believe that Lisa will eventually remember him or her. When that mole finds out that Lisa is alive, he or she will certainly send in an assassin.

With therapies going nowhere, Lisa immediately resolves to discharge herself. However, as her shadow falls on her room’s curtained window, bullets shatter the pane, just missing her. With the help of her neurologist, Hank Pelegrew, who has fallen in love with her, Lisa feigns her own death, thus gaining the freedom to pursue the mole, her own identity, and a normal life, possibly with Hank.

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With a kick to a stranger’s neck, Lisa has killed an assassin. Since the deathblow occurred instinctively, Lisa questions her control over her own body. Guilt over causing a death drives Lisa to edge of her sanity. In addition, Lisa’s neurologist, Hank Pelegrew, confesses his love for her. Though she loves him too, she decides not to pursue that relationship until she achieves more emotional stability.

Two days later, in an airport parking lot, she spots a scoped rifle on the upper deck of parking garage pointed toward her. She dives for cover, taking a nearby stranger down with her. Bullets zing overhead. As Lisa curses her new assassin, the stranger claims that she is the intended victim. Uncertain which of them should be ducking, Lisa takes the younger woman underwing, improvising their mutual escape from the airport. Lisa immediately then begins conjuring strategies for their ultimate return.

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After two years of marriage to Hank Pelegrew, Lisa’s memories are still offline. Lisa works as a CIA translator and is trying to start a family. The CIA then asks her to steal the formulas and technology that might repair the damage the gulag doctors in Turkmenistan inflicted on her memory. However to succeed, Lisa must ignore Hank’s objections and then over come a few obstacles: angry students occupy the US Embassy in Teheran, Iran, her point of entry; barbed wire, guard towers, and mines stand between Lisa and Turkmenistan; and the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan effectively plugging Lisa’s only exit. Furthermore, though Lisa does not know yet it, she is pregnant. When Lisa discovers this, she well beyond a point of return and, in order to keep the baby within her womb, requires bed rest.

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