Gabriel Logan, Lawrence Mujari, and Lian Xing stand before Teresa Lipan's grave. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Vincent Hadden cancels a capture operation for the protagonists — claiming he has other plans for Logan, specifically to use him as a scapegoat in upcoming Congressional hearings. What follows is a series of interlocking flashback testimonies: Logan's 1999 mission in Tokyo and Costa Rica, Mujari's 1984 encounter with the Syphon Filter virus in apartheid-era South Africa, Xing's 1987 operations in Kabul and her side of Costa Rica, and Lipan's own story from a Montana militia conspiracy in the early 1990s. All of it converges on a Washington conspiracy with Hadden at its center and Aramov as his accomplice — and on a final confrontation that will determine who controls the Agency.