It is 1921, and Prohibition is in full swing--even as millions still imbibe and ruthless criminals get rich overnight by selling them booze. Cops, Feds, and Coast Guardsmen are all susceptible to bribery. But when Bell's boss and lifelong friend Joseph Van Dorn is shot and near-fatally wounded while chasing bootleggers, he enters the fray.

Bell promises Van Dorn that he will try to save the detective agency from the corrupting effects of Prohibition. But when the first witness to Van Dorn's shooting is executed in a ruthlessly efficient manner invented by the CHEKA, the Russian Communist secret police, Bell finds himself combating men far more deadly than ordinary criminals. And he's about to fight a one-man war...