Martin Odum is a one-time CIA field agent turned private detective in Brooklyn, struggling his way through a labyrinth of memories of past identities - "legends" in Agency parlance. Is he really Martin Odum? Or is he Dante Pippen, an IRA explosives maven turned CIA agent? Maybe he is Lincoln Dittman, Civil War expert. Or yet another legend? These men like different foods and different women, speak different languages, and have different skills." Is Odum suffering from multiple personality disorder, brainwashing, or simply exhaustion? Is he a creation of the Legend Committee at the CIA's Langley headquarters? Can he trust the Agency's psychiatrist? Or the Deputy Director of Operations? Or Stella Kastner, a young Russian woman who engages him to find her brother-in-law so he can give her sister, an Orthodox Jew, a divorce, which under religious law requires the husband's presence?