In this sixth in a series of novels reflecting his experiences as an operations officer in the CIA, author John Sager brings his characters and his readers back home, from Moscow to Washington, DC. It is the year 1984 and president Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars) has become the Soviet Union's major concern. KGB headquarters has tasked its rezidentura in Washington to initiate a full-court press, to determine the nature and scope of SDI and then develop a plan to defeat it. The CIA, through a penetration of that rezidentura, identifies the KGB officers who will do the work. It then develops an elaborate plan to mislead them; if successful, the savings to American taxpayers will exceed billions of dollars. However, the KGB has its own sources and dispatches a hit squad from Moscow to assassinate the Agency's principal participant in the plan. As the title suggests, the nation's capital becomes a secret world of manipulation and intrigue as the two intelligence services try to outwit each other. Readers will recognize many of the characters from the author's previous works-but at home, in the nation's capital city, the stakes are much higher than before.