The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics may have died decades ago but not all the roots are dead. When Dan Bailey, a successful English executive living in Chicago starts to have bizarre, frightening nightmares of a long-ago Russian childhood, he gradually discovers that he is one of those hidden roots, a "Manchurian Candidate" left behind many years ago as a weapon against the USA. His incredible psychological mind-conditioning back in a secret camp in Siberia has left him an unwilling slave of a one-time General in the KGB who is using him now as a weapon, not against the country but against his business rivals. Dan discovers that he has murdered enemies of the General and he is quite incapable of refusing the orders he is given and after he has killed, he forgets the event. But the conditioning is breaking down after all these years and Dan starts to remember his childhood, his mother, the training and the men he has killed on the orders of his controller. Desperate to break free of this slavery, Dan tries to enlist the help of those who were once his enemy, the US intelligence forces who had tried to create their own Manchurian Candidates in years gone by. But undergoing the appalling, near-fatal process of breaking the mental conditioning leaves Dan not knowing who is friend and who is enemy.