During Canada's Crisis of 1970, Pierre Laporte, a member of Pierre Trudeau's cabinet, has been found murdered in Montreal. At the same time, using the chaos caused in the French-speaking community by the imposition of martial law, a federal officer tries to dupe the FLQ terrorists out of their war chest. But he confronts an unanticipated adversary a "human monster".The story moves to Virginia, 1996. Dr. Paul Racine, a Parisian who lives in Richmond with his Quebecois wife, performs a heart transplant on his latest patient, Mr. Powell. Except for the keen interest evinced by Annette Racine and the chairman of the surgery department, everything about Powell's case seems perfectly routine. But while recovering from the operation, questions not only arise regarding the legality of the transplant, but Powell's very identity. The mystery comes to a head when Racine is confronted by an official from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who says Powell is not even an American, but an old member of the Quebec Liberation Front on the run from Canadian authorities. Racine has been tricked into performing a transplant on an unqualified candidate.As fragments of old history are explored, from the disastrous Canadian attack on Dieppe in 1942 to the Crisis of '70, the characters' true identities are revealed. This in turn culminates in a kidnap-chase that stretches from Richmond to Montreal, and the revelation that a third party has been manipulating them all: almost literally, a ghost from the past

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