In an infamous Soviet prison camp, an old thief whispers a secret in a young thief's ear. Twenty years later, the two reunite on the blistering sands of Brooklyn's Coney Island. Instantly, a shower of bullets launches the younger thief on a hunt for a precious and lethal treasure, into a struggle to salvage what remains of his Russian-Jewish soul, and into an affair with an American reporter with dark secrets of her own.