In Northern Norway during the 1860s, a little girl named Dina accidentally causes her mother's death. Overcome with grief, her father refuses to raise her, leaving her in the care of the household servants. Dina grows up wild and unmanageable, with her only friend being the stable boy, Tomas. She summons her mother's ghost and develops a strange fascination with death as well as a passion for living.
While doing a friend a favor and searching for a runaway teenager, a police detective stumbles upon a bizarre band of criminals about to pull off a bank robbery.
Robert Scott (Val Kilmer) is a career military officer working for a highly sacretive special operations force. A man hardened by years of brutal service, he is respected by his peers and elders in the world of espionage. When Scott is recruited to find Laura Newton (Kristen Bell), the President's college-age daughter, he is paired with novice Curtis (Derek Luke), who becomes his protégé. Working with a special task force comprisednof Presidential Advisors, the Secret Service, FBI and CIA, Scott and Curtis stumble upon a white salvery ring, which may have some connection to Laura's disappearance.
As the story unfolds, the straigthforward search-and-rescue mission becomes complicated by Curtis' naivete and the political ambitions of those in high places - like Burch (Ed O'Neill) and Stoddard (William H. Macy), political operatives whomay know more than they're telling about the circumstances surrounding Laura's abduction.
Scott and Curtis are on the bank of tracking Laura's whereabouts when their clandestine mission comes to an abrupt conclusion as the media issues reports of the girl's death. Scott returns to the quiet life as a rural landowner and awaits his next assignment in relative peace. But Curtis can't rest. He seeks out Scott to confide his belief that Laura is alive. If she is, their continued unofficial investigation will put them - as well as Laura - at the center of a dangerous conspiracy that reaches the highest leavels.