Karl Baier has been enjoying his tour on the CIA's seventh floor as the Special Advisor for Strategic affairs, a reward of sorts for his successful mission in Turkey two years earlier. But with the intensifying and divisive debate in Washington about America's future engagement in Vietnam, the Director sends Baier on a special mission to Saigon to prepare a report on the Agency's assessment of the situation on the ground and the prospects for America's growing involvement. The assignment has a specific focus and a tight deadline.But it isn't long before Baier is drawn into a dangerous operation that has much deeper implications for the war itself and the broader global and strategic competition, of which Vietnam is only one part.