Lawyer Richard Troy doesn’t do mathematics. But when he accepts Chechen number theorist Aslan Ivanov as a client, he realises that life, love and death are all part of the same equation.

Aslan possesses a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis – a mathematical proposition that has defied academics for 150 years. With the power to unlock public key encryption across the internet, blowing open all online financial transactions in the process, the proof is priceless. Aslan’s friend, Anthony Heims, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, secretly envies Aslan for it. American banker Clayton Ruck will pay anything to have it. Siberian assassin Colonel Vladimir Tutov will stop at nothing to get it.

Forced to defend much more than Aslan’s legal rights, Troy becomes a reluctant number in Ruck’s and Tutov’s deadly calculations. The more Troy learns of Aslan’s story, the further he strays from his role as a lawyer. Suddenly, Troy is no longer crossing swords with courtroom opponents. Now the weapons are real, his adversaries merciless. And no judge will step in to save him from slaughter.