Coming of age during the Vietnam War, Mike McCurry decides to join the U.S. Army rather than be drafted or take a fl ight to Canada. He is assigned to the Army Security Agency and begins a life of covert operation as a voice interceptor. In the late 1960s, McCurry arrives at Teufelsberg, a super-secret listening station in West Berlin. McCurry and his fellow operatives have direct access to some of the most sensitive conversations of top offi cials of the East German government's Central Committee in East Berlin. Unfortunately, McCurry's group of interpreters and analysts are supervised by regular Army personnel, who have no idea of the tasks being carried out by those under their command. McCurry's supervisors are more interested in how their troops perform on the drill field than how they are fulfilling their assigned intelligence mission, and that doesn't sit well with McCurry when national security is at stake.

It doesn't take him long to recognize that it will require a combination of guile and humor to overcome the obstacles put in his path by clueless supervisors. But the incompetence of the leadership ultimately becomes deadly, forcing McCurry to make a choice between following orders . or facing a court martial.