It is the fall of 1951 and the Korean War is raging. Twenty-six year-old Nicholai Hel has spent the last three years in solitary confinement at the hands of the Americans. Hel is a master of hoda korosu or "naked kill," fluent in over six languages, and has honed extraordinary "proximity sense"--an extra-awareness of the presence of danger. He has the skills to be the world's most formidable assassin and now the CIA needs him. The Americans offer Hel freedom in exchange for one small service: go to Beijing and kill the Soviet Union's Commissioner to China. It's almost certainly a suicide mission, but Hel accepts. Now he must survive chaos, violence, suspicion, and betrayal while trying to achieve his ultimate goal of satori--the possibility of true understanding and harmony with the world.