These values are challenged when he leaves Korea as a highly decorated combat veteran and is assigned to Army Intelligence in Japan. He becomes involved in the cover-up of a botched CIA scheme to smuggle spies into China aboard the Kochi Maru and questions the validity and morality of an operation that kills a number of innocent people.
Grainger finds himself in direct conflict with his supervisor, a bureaucratic empire builder and, more threatening, the notorious, amoral Colonel Sukow Kim of the South Korean CIA. Kim is determined to eliminate Grainger in any way possible.
Grainger enlists the support of some Army friends and finds a surprising ally in the person of Arcady Petrovsky, a Soviet Intelligence general who has his own reasons for a payback against the malevolent Colonel Kim. Together, they craft a plan to neutralize Kim and also avert a major international incident that threatens a crisis in American Intelligence.