In 1985, the Cold War was fading-but the shadows it created are not. Earl Johnson lives quietly in a forgotten Kentucky town, fixing cars and keeping to himself. To his neighbors, he's just a reclusive mechanic. To the CIA, he's a name that shouldn't exist. And to one rising analyst, he may be the key to a buried operation that was never meant to resurface. A corrupted voice recording from Zurich brings a long-dead threat into focus, and CIA analyst Lena Hanson starts to trace the one man whose past has been erased by design. But she is not alone in looking for him. Across the ocean, Dmitry Volkov; global visionary, silent manipulator, the face of a billion-dollar empire; moves pieces on a board nobody else can see. What secret binds these men? Why did Earl get erased from history? And why is the world's most dangerous philanthropist suddenly afraid of a ghost? In the shadows, the Cold War never ended; it only went quiet.