In his final hours in the Oval Office the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years in prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. Backman may have obtained secrets that compromise the world's most sophisticated satellite surveillance system. Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country and given a new name and home in Italy. The CIA then leaks his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese and the Saudis. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him?