What would happen if the US economy were to shut down? That is exactly the crisis John Schmidt, and the NSA is faced with after twenty influential countries conspire to destroy America’s economy. Panic grips the United States as the U.S. dollar becomes worthless and hyper-inflation kicks in. Gold soars to three thousand dollars an ounce, and oil trades at more than three hundred dollars a barrel.
After an early season sailboat race in the Chesapeake Bay, forty-seven year old John Schmidt finds that the financial markets have pulled back... significantly. John is a self made millionaire from his years on Wall Street. He is a brilliant mathematician, concentrating his efforts in the areas of probability theory and statistics.
That evening, his friend, George O’Malley, ex-NSA cryptologist and conspiracy theorist, stops over to inform John that he’s found a code “deep inside” a Saudi web page. George’s conspiratorial mind believes that America is about to be attacked. He’s right. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve has already been assassinated. Those at the top of the NSA know someone is going to assassinated next. The question is, who will it be? Minutes after realizing who the assassins next target is, John’s wife, Kate, falls into the hands of an assassin herself. Now, John finds himself struggling to save two people at the same time, but time is running out.
Papercut’s plot and characters are torn from today’s geopolitical headlines. Join John Schmidt as he is thrown into an international game of cat and mouse where codes and ciphers hold the key to Americas very survival.