Penalty of Hoping

Willi Koenig is a celebrity journalist, and a highly respected television 'talking head'; but he counts himself a failure. He had written, exposed, urged, and did battle year after year yet little, if anything, changed.

While struggling with his deep `mid-life' crisis, he accidentally comes across the one person he never expected to see again; a former Wermacht officer and convicted war criminal who had vowed to kill Koenig if they ever met again. Koenig has a choice: either discover and write about how a ex-war criminal managed to get into the United States, or end his depression with his own personal assassin.

Koenig moves back and forth between the two paths, sowing confusion and pain for those around him, especially his wife. Koenig's `assassin' is also conflicted. He's trying to forget his crazed vow of decades ago in order to fulfill an undercover mission.