Stella Sartori and Jack Rogers, both Australians, work for a New York bank. Their boss, Frank Spiteri, sends Stella and her team to Peoria to report on the takeover of Collins Military Systems by the Kradel company. Spiteri’s friend Daniel Cross, now head of Kradel and formerly head of CMS, complains that Stella has stolen an important file. Spiteri promotes Jack from the market floor to the mergers and acquisitions section, and sends him after Stella and the file. Cross’s aggressive behaviour convinces Stella of the accuracy of her intuitive belief that the file is very sensitive indeed. Jack keeps an open mind about her motivation and does not accept Cross’s claim that she wants to profit from the theft. At the core of Stella’s concern is a poem ‘The Virgin’s Secret’, written in the 1960s, which seems to hold the key to Cross’s past.