During perestroika, a Chicago student visiting Moscow inadvertently gets caught up in a perilous game involving a stolen Russian Orthodox icon amidst the USSR's transition to capitalism.

During Gorbatchov's perestroika, Archer Sloan, a Chicago student, visits Moscow while the Soviet Union is changing from Communist to Wild West capitalist society. Purely by bad luck, he becomes a pawn in a dangerous cat and mouse game for a black Madonna, a precious icon, which was stolen from Russian Orthodox clergy by the quickly rising, rich and corrupt Russian mafia, and then by a black market-girl he followed just as a flirt who didn't know herself what she nicked. The well-connected mobsters find him and threaten his life in no time, and the US embassy isn't very helpful, worse, it's also infiltrated...—KGF Vissers