Dispatched to Quebec City to execute a senile Russian fugitive, a damaged CIA asset discovers the target is her long-lost father and the only man holding proof that the U.S. President is her childhood rapist.

SYNOPSIS:

In Kiev, February 2010, Anton Milosevic is woken by a frantic call from Scott Baker, a visiting senator, following the election victory of Viktor Yanukovich. Milosevic and CIA case officer Colin Wainwright travel to the "River Palace," a riverboat casino and brothel. Inside Room 21, they find Baker covered in blood and a twelve-year-old girl, Masha, raped and unconscious. Wainwright discovers a hidden camera in the vent, but the recording drive is missing. The boat owner, Kovalenko, reveals the drive was taken by a bodyguard for Yanukovich. Baker flees the room before Wainwright returns.

Fifteen years later, in present-day Quebec City, Marie Hunter, a CIA officer with a troubled past, tracks Wainwright to a café. Wainwright, now Chief of Station, tasks her with a mole hunt. Her target is Immigration Minister Christian Tremblay suspected of running an off-the-books safe harbor program shielding international fugitives from U.S. intelligence. He believes Tremblay is hiding a high-value Russian asset possessing stolen US intel. Marie must compromise Tremblay to force him to give up the asset.

Simultaneously, Chantal Roberge, a physician and director of the Montcalm Retirement Home and Tremblay’s ex, deals with a faulty heater and a dementia addled resident named Frank Bauer. Bauer, a formidable chess player with no known family, stumbles and hits his head. At the hospital, an ER doctor informs Chantal that Bauer has deep scarring consistent with severe torture, not an industrial accident as he claims. A nurse, Zilya Gareev, recognizes Bauer as he is moved through the hospital; she is terrified and enraged, identifying him as a man who killed their family. She is later joined by her husband Arslan who considers killing Bauer in his hospital bed but is interrupted by a janitor.

Marie initiates her plan by stalking Josée Vigneault, a young staffer for Christian Tremblay who leads a lonely life. At a bar, Marie observes men drug Josée's drink. Marie intervenes violently, beating the men and stealing their wallets before driving the intoxicated Josée home. This positions Marie as a savior to Tremblay's inner circle. As the secret service prepares for an upcoming G7 meeting for Scott Baker, now President, Wainwright meets with Rene Valois of the Sûreté, fishing for information on a Russian defector named Volkov who may have been resettled in Quebec by the French. Wainwright has been hunting for the missing hard drive from Kiev for years and is convinced Volkov has it.

After the meeting, Valois warns Christian Tremblay that the Americans are onto their scheme regarding the French and the defector. Christian assures him the Russian is safely tucked away. Having spent the night monitoring Josée, Marie leaves at dawn and walks the streets, emotions bubbling inside her. Later in the morning, Frank Bauer is released from the hospital. He urgently requests Chantal take him to the bank. Once there, Bauer accesses his safety deposit box alone. Inside, he has cash, passports, a gun, and a hard drive stamped with the "River Palace" logo and the number "21". It is the missing evidence of the President's crime.

THE MASHA EFFECT