Elizabeth Moynihan, a young journalist, has hit the jackpot. It's 1992 and a chance remark has sent her to a small farm in the middle of nowhere in Colorado. There resides Russia's most notorious sniper-turned-spy, the one-time beautiful assassin, Tat'yana Levchenko, and she's ready to tell her story. During the Second World War, Tat'yana was Russia's secret weapon. After the Germans killed her daughter, aged four, she enlisted as a sniper for the Russian army. Having finally achieved her goal of killing three hundred Germans, she was badly injured in a siege and shipped back to Moscow. She was presented to Stalin, paraded among the ranks of high society and before the world's press. Her duty to her country not yet over, she was sent to America, to befriend Eleanor Roosevelt, touring the nation with her, securing support for the war. And all the while, she was to send vital information about American armament and troop plans back to her homeland. Before long, Tat'yana was ready to defect, putting her own life — and that of the man she loves — in more grave danger than ever before.

Augustus Cain is a man with his back against the wall. A war-scarred wanderer, he faces a past he wants to forget, a present without prospect or fortune, and an uncertain future marred by the loss of his most prized possession — his horse — which he has carelessly gambled away. But he is not without skill — he has an uncanny, if unwelcome, ability to track the most elusive runaway slaves. And to repay a debt and keep his horse, he must head north from Virginia and retrieve a runaway named Rosetta. When he eventually runs Rosetta to ground in Boston, Cain discovers she carries a secret — and the size of the bounty on her head begins to make more sense. Fleeing the northern states pursued by a posse of Unionists, Cain finds himself increasingly drawn to Rosetta and starts to wonder if his five hundred dollar fee — if any fee — could ever be enough to return her to her master...