As a contract agent of the CIA Cafe, the agency's black-budget Contract Agents for Economics, Terry Weston played a clandestine game of espionage against the spy services of Europe in which nobody got badly hurt. But the game becomes deadly for Terry, his wife Maria and their six-year-old daughter when old allies turn into bitter enemies. The Europe where Americans once vacationed is fading from memory. Germany is bankrupt, NATO dissolved. A supersized Greater European Union, led by France and Russia, engages in political brinkmanship with a dominant United States. The new leaders of Europe are obsessed with 'the American problem,' that Europe still plays a global No.2 to the U.S. Even in space, the new frontier, the Pentagon plans to deploy a Space Shield that will give the U.S. military this high ground. But the DGSE spy service has developed a technology solution. Elegant, mathematical, devastating, it will make Europe No.1 in space, and reduce the U.S. military into a fighting force that will have to fight with its fists. Only Terry and Maria can penetrate deep into enemy territory to prevent a stunningly cynical act of sabotage from ending America's days as a superpower. But old friends and even family members can no longer be trusted, as the two great rivals of the 21st century head for a conflict as inevitable as tomorrow's headlines.