Why would anyone want to kidnap two respected members of the community? Paul and Walter, life-long friends brought up in East Berlin in the 1960s during the Stasi (Secret Police) regime, are devastated when their respective fathers suddenly disappear without trace.
Even when the Berlin Wall comes down in 1989, the Stasi tentacles continue to stretch throughout Europe and even into England. Revenge and rivalries between officers already involved in the smuggling of millions of dollars-worth of goods out of Russia and East Germany lead to blackmail and murder.
In 2009, twenty years after the collapse of Communism, the Stasi prison and record offices are opened to victims and their families. Paul and Walter visit Berlin to search for records of their fathers, and are enraged when they discover the torture suffered by them and the identity of the reporting officer.
Worse, this person is blackmailed by a former Stasi officer to become betrothed to Paul's widowed cousin in Prague, whose young children are threatened with defacement and injury. How can this marriage be prevented? A plot is hatched, ending in murder.