Recalled to Washington and riding an editor's desk, journalist Colin Burke itches to be back in Russia. A friend's murder is hardly the cause he would have wished for, so it's with a mix of guilt and eagerness that he picks up his reporter's notebook again, and heads for St. Petersburg. Poking around the seedy, familiar corridors of Russian politics and police bureaucracy, Burke is in his element, but as the threads of the murder seem increasingly to lead to the Hermitage - one of the world's great museums - he may be out of his depth. Someone seems to have been planning to steal some of the museum's priceless paintings, but Burke knows nothing about art. Fumbling his way into instant expertise, he could have the story that will cap his career. But there's a good chance that he'll get capped instead.