Pascual: His name was legend. A courier for a network of radical groups committed to terrorist activity throughout Europe, he had defected to the enemy and in the hands of Mossad and the CIA had become the single most effective secret weapon in their counterterrorist operations. Then he had disappeared.

Cadging meals and sleeping in flophouses, Pascual has shed his past in the teeming portside alleys of Barcelona's Gothic Quarter. While he has begun to find something like peace of mind, the man who broke the covert world of international terrorism wide open cannot entirely escape his memories. Alcohol and a plump widow's fleshly charms help him forget, but in neither can he banish the shadow of the beautiful, alluring Katixa, the one terrorist agent he did not betray and whom he has no hope of ever seeing again. Or so he thinks.

Like a nova exploding in Pascual's cosmos, Katixa bursts back into his life. On the run from both the police and a terrorist band of Basque nationalists from whom she's appropriated a suitcase full of kidnapping cash, Katixa arrives with five million francs, a one way ticket out of Spain, and a plan. The plan includes Pascual. And when Katixa ardently demonstrates the love she professes for him, Pascual's better judgment doesn't stand a chance. To save Katixa's life and perhaps redeem his own, Pascual dusts off his old professional skills in the perilous arts of subterfuge and deceit. Again the lying has begun, with the crying and dying yet to come.