Salt

Plots: A CIA agent goes on the run after a defector accuses her of being a Russian spy. Evelyn Salt is a CIA agent and highly respected by all, including her boss, Ted Winter. Out of the blue, a Russian spy walks into their offices and offers a vital piece of information: the President of Russia will be assassinated during his forthcoming visit to New York City to attend the funeral of the recently deceased U.S. Vice President. The name of the assassin: Evelyn Salt. Concerned about the safety of her husband, who she cannot contact, she goes on the run. Winter refuses to accept that she is a mole or a double agent but her actions begin to raise doubts. Just who is Evelyn Salt and what is she planning? A Russian calling himself Orlov and claiming to be FSB walks into undercover CIA offices in Washington DC wanting to defect. He says that he has information on a Russian sleeper cell, whose members were trained since they were children. Their mission is to infiltrate the American system by being one of them, ultimately with the goal of bringing down the United States starting on a specified day – code “Day X” – which will begin with the assassination of the current Russian President in New York City at the upcoming funeral of the American Vice-President. The CIA interrogator deems Orlov a crackpot until he names the agent tasked with killing the Russian president: Evelyn Salt. The importance of this last piece of information is that Evelyn Salt is the CIA operative currently in the room with him as his CIA interrogator, her name which he does and should not know in the current context. Darryl Peabody with CIA counter-intelligence, who is monitoring the interrogation, feels he needs to question Evelyn before she leaves the building as a matter of proper protocol. Evelyn, denying all accusations, decides instead to make a run for it, she states all in an effort to save her husband, German arachnologist Mike Krause, who she believes has been targeted as part of the Russian plot against her. Beyond love, her devotion to Mike is largely because he, before knowing of her work as a CIA agent, helped negotiate her release from North Korean captivity two years earlier when she was in special ops in the field, that captivity which included torture. The longer Evelyn is on the run, the more she looks guilty to the American authorities pursuing her. Although helping Peabody and his team try to capture Evelyn, Ted Winter, her CIA colleague, is the only person seemingly who believes she is innocent of the accusations. There may be others in the Russian cell in positions of American authority who may be part of the plot if Orlov’s story in the general sense is to be believed, they who may be trying to help or stop Evelyn, depending if she is truly part of the cell.