When Jesse Bolger ran into an old acquaintance from his high school days, Robert Gleason, he wondered if the man still had an imagination that was unencumbered by reality. His question was answered in the affirmative that evening.

After insisting they talk inside his homemade, electronically shielded room so no one could listen to their thoughts—no tinfoil hat was good enough for Robert—he confided that he’d stumbled onto two KGB-era Russian spies intent on destroying the United States. And he wanted Jesse’s help to stop them.

Jesse was certain, of course, that it was just a hoax, but he played along. It didn’t prove to be one of his better decisions, however, as the next thing he knew, he was being detained by the FBI under suspicion that he was a double agent.

And where was Robert Gleason, the man who had started this whole fiasco, the unemployed eccentric who lived in his grandmother’s basement in a retirement community while he was learning to talk to self-aware computers? He was nowhere to be found. Knowing he was out of his league to investigate a missing persons case, Jesse hired private investigator Rebecca Marte, hoping she could unravel a case that one minute looked like a spy spoof and the next, a terrorist plot that would plunge the United States into financial chaos.

. .