Cross is an experienced, but retiring CIA agent and assassin who is training Scorpio, Jean Laurier, to replace him. Cross teaches him as much about protecting himself from patrons and never trusting anyone as how to get away clean, shaping a hard-won philosophy of staying alive in a world where loyalties shift with every mission.
The CIA orders [Scorpio] to kill Cross for suspected treason and collaboration with the Soviets, but Cross acts first and offers him a large sum to walk away. Scorpio travels back to the US with Cross, where Cross visits his wife and Laurier visits his sister and girlfriend, who are roommates. The CIA keeps pressuring Scorpio to assassinate Cross, but he proves reluctant until a break-in at his apartment frames Laurier with a narcotics charge. With little choice left, he accepts the mission to terminate Cross. Aware that they want him out, Cross flees to Vienna in disguise and reunites with his Soviet opposite and friend, Sergei Zharkov, who provides him a safehouse. Scorpio follows Cross’s trail to Vienna, while Cross plans to pull his wife out of the US and exit the spy game for good. Despite blown covers and repeated CIA ambush attempts, Cross stays one step ahead of his pursuers.
In a devastating turn, CIA agents break into Cross’s home and kill his wife, Sarah, forcing Cross to return to America. He rejects protection from Zharkov, whose agency hopes to pry loose the secrets Cross has carried for years. Zharkov helps Cross cover his tracks and reach the United States, but Cross still evades capture and even neutralizes McLeod, the agency director responsible for his wife’s death. The CIA, now intent on erasing Cross entirely, contracts Scorpio once more.
The new CIA director and Scorpio’s handler, Filchock, present evidence that Cross may have collaborated in the past with other foreign agents and profited from it. Surveillance footage from the Library of Congress appears to show Cross’s wife meeting an accomplice, and Scorpio also sees his girlfriend leaving the scene, raising the possibility that she has been working with Cross all along. Enraged, Scorpio corners Cross and Susan and kills his girlfriend instantly without remorse. Cross insists that she was merely a Czech courier and that he was a middleman trying to keep the game going, not a betrayer. With those last words of hard-won wisdom still echoing, Scorpio finishes Cross. Moments later, a mysterious assailant shoots Scorpio as Cross had predicted, sealing a tragedy born from a web of loyalty, deception, and the high-stakes world of espionage.
