Phoebe Frost, an upright Republican member of Congress, travels to Berlin to look into reports of corruption among the occupying American forces. She enlists an Army captain in her crusade and finds herself falling for him, unaware that he is the man romantically involved with a German cabaret singer who can lead army investigators to a high-level Nazi war criminal.

On New Year's Day, 2005, David Shaw traveled halfway around the world on a journey that took him to a steep crater in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa, a site known as Bushman's Hole. His destination was nearly 900 feet below the surface. On January 8th he descended into the water. About fifteen feet below the surface was a fissure in the bottom of the basin, barely wide enough to admit him. He slipped through the opening and disappeared from sight,...