It is night in Manhattan. The President of the United States is scheduled to have dinner with an old friend. In the building across the street, a man stands at a window, a rifle in his hand.

Fortunately, his assassination attempt is not successful - but this is only the beginning. Someone is recruiting a shadowy network of terrorists. 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 they find another, and behind him another still. And that man is not pleased by the interference. Soon he will target them all: Johnson, Dillon, Dillon's colleagues. And one of them will fall...