William Wyrd, an introverted history professor at long remove from his youthful days as a marine sniper, is drafted to serve overseas in the U.S. military at age thirty-nine. Already in a relationship made tenuous by the demands of dual professional careers and their own dearth of interpersonal experience, he and his wife are completely estranged by the blunder on the part of the government. But is this merely human error at work, a bad mix of circumstances—or tangling of the skein of Fate? In the tradition of Robert Ludlum's Bourne Identity and follow-up novels, this literary action-adventure tale tests whether one's present choices, and even ultimate destiny, need be determined by one's past.