Mark Neider, a young Ukrainian-born American IT specialist, finds himself in crime-ridden Yeltsin's Russia, hot on the trail of wheeler dealers who swindled him out of a small fortune back in New York. In Moscow, Mark survives an aborted coup in October 1993 and encounters a mysterious stranger who claims to have had a hand in the recent constitutional crisis. Tasha, Mark's Moscow daredevil girlfriend, helps him retrieve the money at a significant body count, but Mark is only allowed to leave the country with 10K, a mere fraction of the loot now in his possession. Tasha and her film scholar aunt hatch a plan. Tasha's aunt keeps the money while her wealthy Chicagoan ex disburses the equivalent amount to Mark in return for Mark's interviewing the elderly sister of Greg Davis, an American film director who is the subject of Tasha's aunt's scholarly interest. But there's more than meets the eye to Greg Davis's sister who takes Mark on a journey he may or may not return from.