In the annals of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, there is brief mention of a band of American agents who in 1945 saved the life of Ho Chi Minh and both trained and armed a cadre of his Viet Minh guerrillas. This novel is based on their clandestine operations in the jungles of Vietnam and South China. The story has its origin in the conflicting ambitions of the great powers at a time when World War II was drawing to a close. President Roosevelt was seeking to persuade Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle to agree on a trusteeship for Indochina which eventually would lead to Vietnamese independence. On a secret mission to realize Roosevelt's vision, Travis Duncan, a special agent of the OSS, undertakes a perilous journey, eluding bandits and Japanese patrols, to Ho Chi Minh's jungle camp. Operating with Ho's guerrillas, Duncan is witness in North and South Vietnam to the brutality of the no-holds struggle between Vietnamese nationalists and the French for control of Indochina. Two women out of Duncan's past, a Vietnamese spy and a French journalist and secret agent, return to become key actors in his mission. While the central characters of this novel are composite or fictional, they speak to an historical opportunity lost in dealing with Ho Chi Minh that might have spared us the agony of the Vietnam War.