In the winter of 1997, trying to stay alive during a famine that has devastated much of North Korea, Inspector O is ordered to play host to an Israeli agent who appears in Pyongyang. When the wife of a North Korean diplomat in Pakistan dies under suspicious circumstances, O is told to investigate—but with a curious proviso: Don't look too closely at the details, and stay away from the question of missiles. O knows he can't avoid uncovering what he is supposed to ignore on a trail that leads him from the dark, chilly rooms of Pyongyang to an abandoned secret facility deep in the countryside, guarded by a lonely general, and from the streets of New York to a bench beneath a horse chestnut tree on the shores of Lake Geneva, where the Inspector discovers he is up to his ears in missiles—and worse. Stalked by the past and wary of the future, O is convinced there is no one he can trust and no one he can't suspect. Swiss intelligence wants him out of the country; someone else wants him dead.