2024, and China is massing troops on its coast across the Strait from Taiwan. This time it looks like they’re serious about invading an act that would result in a full scale war between the People’s Republic and the US and its allies, including the UK.
But Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service has an agent in play - a source close to the top of the Chinese Communist Party who’s ready to pass on vital secrets that could defuse the looming conflict. But just as the handover is taking place in a backstreet cafe in Hong Kong, the agent’s MI6 handler is snatched before she can transmit the data back to London. There are few clues as to who might be responsible. Is it the MSS, China’s infamous state security agency? Or could it be another, less predictable player in the game?

Luke Carlton, now one of MI6’s most experienced field operatives, is sent to track down the missing agent. It’s a highly sensitive mission for a multitude of reasons and accompanying him is his Mandarin-speaking colleague, the highly capable Jenny Li. Following various tip offs, they make their way from lavish Macao casinos to seedy night clubs but Luke senses something’s not quite right. Too late they discover that their agent has been kidnapped and now on a rusting cargo ship churning through the South China Sea.
So Luke and Jenny head for Taiwan and find themselves in a country frantically preparing for imminent invasion. It’s there, in a remote mountain temple, that they find the missing MI6 officer. But as China’s People’s Liberation Army begins to flex its muscles, tensions escalate. The world holds its breath and Luke finds himself facing a seemingly impossible dilemma: choose between losing a person he realises he’s come to love and averting what could become a cataclysmic global war. He should really have no choice …