Two years prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese and German spies are pitted against a diverse team of U.S. counter-intelligence agents recruited from the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Baltimore City Police Department. As the Axis operatives and their American supporters scheme to steal top-secret U.S. radar technology, cripple the production of advanced military aircraft and assassinate the government official responsible for ramping up war-winning research and development programs, a small band of U.S. expendables is all that stands in the way of Hitler's and Hirohito's henchmen—and their plans to defeat America before it even enters World War II.

In 1939, high school history teacher Martin Victor receives a telegram ordering him to report to the Department of the Navy in Washington, DC. What begins as a mysterious job interview at the Office of Naval Intelligence becomes a descent into the lethal, zero-sum game of espionage being played against ruthless and relentless Japanese and German spy masters on the unforgiving streets of Baltimore and Washington.

Martin finds himself teamed with a peculiarly iconoclastic band of fellow expendables culled from the ranks of the Baltimore City Police Department and the FBI. Together this collection of U.S. counter-intelligence agents abandons bureaucratic protocols and operates according to the dictates of Baltimore Logic to prevent their murderously Machiavellian adversaries from disrupting the United States' ability to wage modern war.

This sophisticated historical novel tracks one man's evolution from pawn to knight, living and loving nobly while caught in a maelstrom where honor, courage and commitment may not be enough to win the day—or even survive.