Private investigator Bob Devaney often did undercover work for a secret federal agency - until the day he was escorting a mysterious woman named Novak to the White House. When they were ambushed by gunmen, Novak used an invisibility device to make an impossible escape-and then was about to terminate him for knowing too much until a message arrived from someone known as Mr. Inconnu. Instead, Devaney joined the Prometheus Project, the largest disinformation operation in history, targeted at the aliens who ruled the galaxy. Mr. Inconnu had arrived in a highly advanced craft in the 1940s, claiming he had escaped from a group of humans whom aliens had been studying. And unless the Earth could convince the aliens that the Earth had a unified government, and technology comparable to that of the galactic rulers, the Earth would become an exploited protectorate. So far the hoax had worked - but someone in the Project was selling secrets to an interstellar mafia called the Tonkuztra that could expose the hoax. And Devaney was very afraid that Chloe Bryant, the woman he loved, was the traitor...