The night that Flight 229 blew apart on landing at Washington's Dulles Airport, and the almost four hundred passengers aboard were killed, a mission began that would become an obsession for James Bond. Who was responsible for destroying the British-owned aircraft? Was it a straightforward act of terrorism, an assassination aimed at only one person, or a move to put the airline out of business? For Bond the search for answers has a personal meaning: his former lover and old friend the Principessa Sukie Tempesta is listed as one of the ill-fated passengers. In this white-knuckle 007 thriller, John Gardner sends master spy James Bond on the most complex and demanding assignment of his career. Across continents and through ever-changing labyrinths of evil, Bond follows the traces of clues into the center of an organization more deadly than any terrorist army - a fanatical society code-named Cold, Children of the Last Days. What he finds there could very well spell his own last days.