Paul Christopher, an agent who is his own man with a personal and political inviolability you seldom meet, acts on private beliefs prompted by subconscious images of deja vu after he is sure that JFK's assassination was in retaliation for the just previous killings of Diem and Nhu. Ordered to drop this investigation which also threatens the life of his girl, Christopher follows up on the connections within the toc (the family tree -- Diem and Nhu were just fallen leaves from its lower branches) to Le Thu (the tears of autumn), both a person and a code name geomantically keyed to the somber day in Dallas. No time for jet lag -- this travels east and west in a sleek and always urgent fashion.