This is an enthralling political thriller. Starting from one seemingly inconsequential event, it escalates to embrace contemporary political events on an epic scale. Though a work of fiction, the author's detailed research into this world, the institutions and the places involved, give a startling authenticity to the tale which emerges. Kate Kimball, a publisher, returns from a business trip in California to find that her partner, Paul Emmerson, an Engineering Professor at Oxford University has mysteriously disappeared. The police, at first helpful, become increasingly and inexplicably obstructive; until Kate realises that if she is to discover what really happened, she must carry out her own investigation. With only a minor clue to go on the task at first seems insurmountable. As she struggles to unravel what happened to Paul, Kate's life descends into a tangle of deceptions. She is increasingly sucked into a murky terrorist event of thirty years before; and then into the most lethal political conspiracy of modern times. Unwittingly, as she seeks to establish Paul's fate, she becomes a pawn in the biggest international crisis since the ending of the Cold War; and her life now endangered, she finds herself confronting the hidden powers of the State. With little room for manoeuvre, she responds with a highly dangerous ploy, a daring plan that represents her only chance of survival - a pawn's gambit which will determine the course of world history.