Alex returns to Prague for the first time since leaving Czechoslovakia as a teenager. His official task is to gather information on a communist regime eliminating private enterprise, expanding its secret police and using show trials to define enemies of the state.
The journey also offers a final opportunity to reconnect with relatives he abandoned for a new life in Vienna. Espionage and family history become inseparable when Alex discovers a secret that changes his understanding of those relationships and gives the state another means of controlling his choices.