the aftermath of the cold war provides the setting for the plot of "death is forever". after the deaths of a british intelligence agent and an american agent with the cia working in germany under mysterious and surprisingly old-fashioned circumstances, james bond and cia agent elizabeth zara ("easy") st. john are assigned to track down the surviving members of "cabal", a cold war-era intelligence network that received a mysterious and unauthorised signal to disband. soon, bond finds himself playing a life-or-death game of "who do you trust?" as he and easy track down wolfgang weisen, the power responsible for killing off cabal's members one by one. bond uncovers weisen's plot to kill off the heads of each european country during the inaugural run of the eurostar from london to paris in an effort to create havoc in the west and usher in a second era of communism.