On a cold, bleak day in 1916, all hell breaks loose in a mining pit in the Ural Mountains. Overcome by a strange paranoia, the miners attack one another, savagely and ferociously. Minutes later, two men-a horrified scientist and Grigory Rasputin, trusted confidant of the tsar-hit a detonator, blowing up the mine to conceal all evidence of the carnage. In the present, FBI agent Sean Reillys search for Reed Corrigan, the CIA mind-control spook who brainwashed Reillys son, takes a backseat to a new, disturbing case. A Russian embassy attaché seems to have committed suicide by jumping out of a fourth-floor window in Queens. The apartments owners, a retired physics teacher from Russia and his wife, have gone missing. Joined by Russian Federal Security Service agent Larisa Tchoumitcheva, Reillys investigation will uncover a desperate search for a mysterious device, with consequences that reach back in time and could have a devastating impact on the modern world.