 In return for carrying out the abduction, the Bougainvilles are to receive one billion dollars in gold, which the Soviets intend to cheat them out of while unaware that the Bougainvilles intend to double-cross them as well.When the disappearance of the President (and those next in the line of succession) on the Presidential yacht is discovered, Secretary of State Douglas Oates, now the acting president, orders a cover-up of the disappearance while a massive search is under way to find the kidnapped men.Congresswoman Loren Smith, the on again-off again lover of Dirk Pitt, who is on a fact-finding mission aboard the Soviet cruise liner "Leonid Andreyev" off the coast of the United States inadvertently witnesses Speaker of the House Alan Moran smuggled onto the ship by a KGB agent.