Cotton Malone, once a member of an elite intelligence division within the Justice Department known as the Magellan Billet, is now retired and owns an old bookshop in Denmark. But when his former boss asks him to track down a rogue North Korean who may have acquired some top secret Treasury Department files --- the kind that could bring the United States to its knees --- Malone is vaulted into a harrowing 24-hour chase that begins on the canals in Venice and ends in the remote highlands of Croatia.