Peter Ashton thinks that he has finished with the twilight world of the SIS. But the SIS has not forgotten Ashton. Captain Simon Oakham of the Royal Army Pay Corps has gone AWOL, immediately after a suspicious interview with the security service. The SIS turns to Ashton to conduct the perfectly routine manhunt. But Ashton soon becomes entangled in an investigation that leads him to a Chechnyan hit team as it careens lethally through the south of England via two dead Army officers to a long-suppressed murder in Hong Kong. The key to it all is a guilt-ridden, embittered woman whose unsuspecting knowledge of a lethal involvement makes her especially vulnerable. Ashton's search for her could prove equally lethal.