Governor Jim Melville looks like a sure thing for his party's presidential nomination. Psychiatrist Ben Jordan, his college friend, never suspects Melville's ties to a sinister group operating behind the facade of the Glenville-Rodgers Foundation, a Beltway think tank. President Harry S. Truman observed that you can accomplish almost anything if you don't insist on getting the credit. Glenville-Rodgers applies Truman's axiom with a darker twist, manoeuvring to seize control of the White House while keeping its activities unnoticed. To hijack crucial academic departments for purposes of its own, it offers Ben's university a record-breaking endowment... with conditions. Ten years before, Ben stumbled upon one of their operations and threw a monkey wrench into their plans. Inconvenient to Glenville-Rodgers and expendable to a university intoxicated with the prospect of virtually unlimited funding, Ben's academic career comes to a painful end. When Jim Melville's daughter's accuses him of incest, Glenville-Rodgers moves to salvage his political future. Calculating that a depressed Ben Jordan can be manipulated to serve their purpose, its operatives score a brilliant success. Jordan saves Melville's reputation. Later, he finds evidence suggesting he was fooled by a skilfully coached lookalike. When Melville's camp takes note of Ben's misgivings, he and his family come under attack. The message is clear: Support Melville or else! Ben's friends help him protect his family as he struggles to solve the mysteries confronting him... Whom did he actually interview? If he interviewed a fraud, what has become of Melville's real daughter? And how can he block a traitor, once one of his best friends, from becoming the most powerful man in the world?