To Niel Nyyren, editor extraordiaire, with greatfull thanks

It's night in Manhattan. The president of the United States is schedulled to have dinner with an old friend, but in the building accross the street, a man has disabled the security and stands at the window, a rifle in his hand.

The assasination doesn't go according to plan, but this is only the beginning. Someone is recruting a shadowy network of agents with the intention of creating terror.

Their range is broad, their identities masked, their methods subtle. White House operative Blake Johnson and his opposite number in British intelligence, Sean Dillon, set out to trace the source of the havoc, but behind the first man lies another, and behind him another still. And the man is not pleased by the interference. Soon he will target them all: Johnson, Dillon, Dillon's colleagues. And one of them will fall....