This is Littell at the top of his form, constructing a tale of espionage and counterespionage that reveals the dirty tricks and dangerous secrets concerning the subjects he knows intimately - The CIA and American history, past and present. At the center of Littell's plot is an elite plan, so secret and so dangerous that its existence is known only to a tiny group of specialists within the CIA headquarters. There is virtually no paper trail - but, somehow, the plan has sprung a leak. The plotters most urgently trace it - or face deadly consequences. Meanwhile, at work elsewhere on another highly sensitive project for "the Company" is an operative known as "the Weeder"--a man obsessed with American history and one of its heroes. When the Weeder's and Washington's clandestine world collide, the present faces the past and disturbing moral choices are weighed against a shining patriotic dream. What is the truth? Whose truth should be revealed?