On Bill Rundle's computer screen was a message from a dead man. Justin Marsh, his graduate research assistant at MIT's Cognitive Computing Lab. Justin was inventive, curious, and brilliant beyond any student he'd ever had. On an early morning walk by the Charles River the day before, Rundle had discovered Justin's body lying in the water, oddly mutilated--the left eye was missing. But now, somehow and from somewhere, a computer belonging to Justin had come to life to send his posthumous email. Attached were over six thousand lines of what looked like jumbled code--or was it? What secret did it hold? Either way, Rundle couldn't make sense of the message, why Justin had sent it, or why those six thousand lines of seeming gibberish may have cost him his life...
Helped by a colleague, Rundle learns it's a program for piloting an America's Cup yacht. Under suspicion himself for Justin's murder, and despite threats, Rundle sets out to uncover the real killer. Suspects linked to an America's Cup team include a Russian Mafioso, an aggressive Japanese millionaire, a Boston-based entrepreneur, even the head of Rundle's own lab. When another colleague is found dead, Rundle deciphers a complex clue that leads him to a deadly climactic encounter.