Patrick Morley is a smart guy. Too smart to be spending the prime of his life in semiretirement on the Florida coast after the death of his young wife. So when Morley meets Dan Casper or Dante Cappuccino, as he's known to the Mafia-he welcomes the opportunity to use his undercover skills, as a bagman in highly sensitive deliveries and pickups.

The Mafia has plans of its own, which begin with the elimination of Casper, and inadvertently give Morley his chance to snatch a couple of million dollars in cash. Morley figures he's got a good chance of escaping, since the Mafia knows only his code name - "Santa." But Dennis Conners, one of the rising stars of the "new" Mafia, used his sophistication and smarts to narrow the possibilities down to Morley. An intricate series of dodges follows. Conners uses a beautiful young woman posing as a guileless vacationer to reveal Morley's identity and plan of escape. But he fails to anticipate that the girl will fall in love with Morley.

Trained to recognize deception, Morley struggles to keep his head as he falls deeply in love. Barely keeping a step ahead of his assassins, he hops from Florida to London, Switzerland to Hong Kong, and finally, to the explosive denouement on a private Tahitian island.