A narrator introduces several characters as we watch events unfold from various vantages: Vanya is a Yugoslavian, adrift after his country's breakup. He's a hitman, now in New York. Anna is a physician, European, in New York after volunteer work in Bosnia. Dirk is a policeman, Anna's boyfriend, seemingly on temporary leave. Vanya's on what's to be a simple job, no violence, an exchange in a hotel. He arrives to find a dead body. He takes the case he's to pick up. Has he been set up? A murderer seems to be right behind him. Anna, in the hotel to see a patient, becomes his hostage while Dirk waits for her outside, ignorant of the deaths nearby. Can Dirk find Anna? What else is going on?