The Broker

In the final hours of his presidency, Arthur Morgan sits in the Oval Office with his longtime advisor, Critz, contemplating last-minute pardons. Humiliated by a historic landslide election loss, Morgan is embittered and detached. His son, Artie, briefly enters to announce the arrival of CIA Director Teddy Maynard. Maynard, a wheelchair-bound veteran operative, proposes a secret plan. He asks Morgan to grant a full pardon to Joel Backman, a once-powerful Washington lobbyist serving a twenty-year sentence. The CIA will then extract Backman from prison, relocate him to a foreign country, and, after a year or so, leak his location. By observing which foreign power assassinates him, the CIA hopes to get answers to critical national security questions. Morgan, relishing the chance to create chaos for his successors and the Washington establishment, agrees to the deal.

At Rudley Federal Correctional Facility, Joel Backman is abruptly summoned from his solitary confinement cell. After six years of isolation, he is gaunt and in poor health. He meets with the prison warden and three officials from Washington. One presents the deal: in exchange for a full presidential pardon, Backman must agree to leave the country immediately, assume a new identity, and live the rest of his life in hiding. Seeing no other option, Backman accepts. Just after midnight, fourteen years ahead of schedule, he walks out of Rudley.

Two officials escort Backman from the prison, stopping for a meal before driving him to Fort Summit, a military base in Texas. There, Backman receives a medical examination and is given an army jumpsuit bearing the name Herzog. He boards a C-130 cargo plane for a fourteen-hour flight. Before they land, a colonel briefs him on the next phase of the plan. They are headed to Aviano Air Base in Italy, and Backman must feign a severe illness upon arrival. As the plane lands, an ambulance meets them on the tarmac, and Major Herzog is transported to the base hospital under the guise of a medical emergency.

Meanwhile, Critz, now in London, leaks the news of the pardon to CBS, igniting a political firestorm in Washington, D.C. The story horrifies Carl Pratt, Backman's former law partner at the now-bankrupt firm of Pratt & Bolling. The narrative then flashes back to explain the scandal. Three young Pakistani computer scientists, Safi Mirza, Fazal Sharif, and Farooq Khan, had discovered a secret network of nine spy satellites they named Neptune. They created a software program called JAM that could control the system. Two of them, Safi and Fazal, hired Joel Backman, known as The Broker, to sell JAM for a fortune. Backman and his partner, former Senator Jacy Hubbard, were misled by a Pentagon double agent into believing the system was American, which emboldened them to market the software. The Pentagon then leaked news of the security breach, leading to an FBI raid. Safi Mirza and Jacy Hubbard were murdered, and Fazal Sharif disappeared. Fearing for his own life and to protect his son, Neal, from prosecution, Backman pled guilty to lesser charges and was sent to prison.

Back in Italy, Backman thwarts a CIA plan to drug and interrogate him by refusing all medications and IVs at the Aviano hospital. Director Maynard orders his operatives to give him a scare. An agent named Stennett provides Backman with his new identity, Marco Lazzeri, a Canadian of Italian descent, and drives him to the city of Treviso. There, Marco meets his new handler, an operative named Luigi, who sets him up in a hotel with a new wardrobe and a cell phone that can only call Luigi's number. Luigi informs Marco that he will begin intensive, immersive Italian lessons with a tutor named Ermanno.

As Marco begins his new life, subplots unfold elsewhere. In Washington, reporter Dan Sandberg of The Washington Post meets with Carl Pratt, and they speculate that the CIA is using Backman as bait. In London, an agent approaches Critz, offering $1 million for Backman's location. Critz's subsequent clumsy phone calls to old contacts alert the CIA. Believing Critz is compromising the operation, Director Maynard orders him neutralized. A CIA agent befriends Critz in a pub, drugs him, and stages a fatal hit-and-run accident.

Luigi stages a sudden departure from Treviso, telling Marco they have been discovered. While driving to their new location, he cites Critz's murder as proof of the danger. They move to Bologna, where Marco continues his lessons with Ermanno. He is eventually settled into a permanent safe house on Via Fondazza, which is secretly bugged with cameras and microphones. Unbeknownst to Marco, Luigi lives in the adjacent apartment, monitoring his every move. Marco also begins afternoon lessons with a new tutor, a tour guide named Francesca Ferro.

The hunt for Backman intensifies. The FBI discovers a $3 million wire transfer linked to Artie Morgan and suspects it was payment for a pardon, making Backman their prime suspect. The new U.S. President forces the CIA to reveal Backman's location. The CIA then leaks the information to China, Russia, and the Saudis. Elite assassination teams, including a Mossad kidon unit and the notorious Chinese assassin Sammy Tin, converge on Bologna.

Sensing he is being manipulated, Marco arranges for his son, Neal, to send a package to him through an acquaintance in Bologna, an eccentric American professor named Rudolph Viscovitch. The package contains a secure smartphone and $2,000 in cash. Marco begins communicating secretly with Neal via encrypted e-mail. He also grows closer to Francesca after she sprains her ankle and he helps her home, learning that her husband, Giovanni, is dying of cancer. His situation becomes more perilous when two men claiming to be FBI agents confront him on the street, calling him by his real name. Soon after, Luigi stages a fire at a café to create a diversion, allowing CIA agents to steal Marco's bag and the smartphone.

Realizing he has been discovered by multiple groups, Marco flees Bologna. He goes to Francesca's apartment for help. She gives him her dying husband's passport, clothes, and briefcase, helping him create a new disguise as Giovanni Ferro. He successfully eludes a CIA tail and takes a taxi to Milan. There, he buys another disguise, communicates with Neal from an internet café, and boards a train bound for Germany. On the train, he realizes he is still being followed and makes an unplanned exit in Zug, Switzerland. The next day, in Zurich, he accesses his secret safe deposit box at Rhineland Bank and retrieves the four disks containing the JAM software. He wires $100,000 to a U.S. bank account for himself and Neal, takes $10,000 in cash, and travels by car to Munich. Using Giovanni Ferro's passport, he flies to New York and takes a train to Washington, D.C.

Back in Washington, Backman contacts Carl Pratt to arrange a meeting with retired Senator Ira Clayburn, a former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. At a Marriott hotel, Backman meets with his son, Pratt, and Clayburn, revealing that he possesses the JAM software and that China built the Neptune system. Clayburn arranges a meeting at the Pentagon with Major Wes Roland of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Backman offers the complete JAM software to the DIA in exchange for protection from the CIA and other foreign agencies, plus two new passports. Roland agrees to the deal, provides Australian and Canadian passports, and Backman hands over the software. Roland warns him that Sammy Tin is now in the United States.

To create a public diversion and mislead his pursuers, Backman stages a comeback. He checks into the presidential suite at the Hay-Adams hotel and gives an exclusive interview to Dan Sandberg, announcing the launch of a new consulting firm. The Mossad locates him but aborts the assassination plan on U.S. soil. Backman has an emotional reunion with Neal, his daughter-in-law Lisa, and his granddaughter Carrie, giving Neal access to the money he wired to the U.S. He tells Neal he is taking a train to Philadelphia to visit his mother, but reveals his true plan is to return to Bologna to be with Francesca. After saying goodbye to his son at Union Station, Joel Backman disappears once more.