Austin, Texas Police Department Detective Sergeant Craig Rylander begins what he thinks is an investigation into two local cases-an arson murder and a car bombing-only to wander unwittingly into the web of a 200-year-old international assassination ring run and controlled by the descendants of the Romanoffs, the last Czars of Russia. Craig"s team, assisted by the Texas Rangers, FBI, Interpol"s Warsaw office and the CIA, finds itself in the crosshairs of the present-day Czarists and marked for death by the Czar himself, Felix Pavlovich, grandson of Empress Alexandra and the mad monk Rasputin. In Craig"s many years of investigative experience, he"s never come across a psychopath like the Czar, or any organized crime syndicate like the Czarists. Will Craig and his team solve the arson and car-bombing without becoming victims of the assassins? Extraordinary measures are called for. But will they be enough?