The head of the Asian department of the SIS has committed suicide and Will Landon, a junior SIS officer just important enough to represent the Service at the funeral, is given the job of damage limitation. The first surprise is that the dead man’s sister-in-law is a publicity agent of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the second is that the SIS were not even aware of the woman’s existence, so when she publicly accuses the Service of killing him, Landon braces himself for trouble – and soon finds it.

Meanwhile, ruthlessly ambitious Jill Sheridan – the woman who means to head the Service one day – is in Florida, engaged in some damage limitation of her own, staying well out of the way as her lover’s wife involves her in a very messy divorce. When she finds herself under threat of blackmail as someone tries to involve her in a pornographic movie, things start becoming even more difficult for Jill, but more importantly, how did an Islamic terrorist group find out where she was?

It is Landon who finally makes the connection between the two incidents and two hundred and sixteen bottles of illicit “whiskey” that turn out to contain a poison that could wipe out half the population of London.