August Wichmann could sway almost anyone, and his means of persuasion are legendary. He attracts supporters with ease. He wins the trust of strangers with little effort. He captivates his college students whenever his lessons include him in the personas of different cultures. The SS takes notice. So does the Resistance. They both want his persuasion skills for their purposes. As a rising SS officer, he convinces himself that he is dedicated in service to his country. Until he witnesses the brutalities firsthand. After that, working with the SS is a daily torment. Doubling for the Resistance creates a different kind of agony, as he has to feign indifference to the atrocities to keep his cover secure. Persuading himself to keep up the charade becomes a grueling ordeal. In his desperate, no-win state, he shares his fears with Brigitte, herself a pawn in the deadly games. Their only reprieve comes from those entrenched in the Resistance, including spymaster Admiral Canaris and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who become the fixed star by which August and Brigitte navigate their shifting moral boundaries.

Set against a tangled web of Abwehr agents and double agents, broken trust and deception, and the earnest hopes and thwarted plans of the Resistance, they tread a precarious path, holding fast to conscience in the face of the horrific evil they are required to fight from the inside.