During Gorbatchovs perestroika, Archer Sloan, a Chicago student, visits Moscow while the Soviet Union is changing from Communist to Wild West capitalist society. Purely by bad luck, he becomes a pawn in a dangerous cat and mouse game for a black Madonna, a precious icon, which was stolen from Russian Orthodox clergy by the quickly rising, rich and corrupt Russian mafia, and then by a black market-girl he followed just as a flirt who didnt know herself what she nicked. The well-connected mobsters find him and threaten his life in no time, and the US embassy isnt very helpful, worse, its also infiltrated...