Off the island of Crete an illicit diver finds a 30-year-old aircraft wreck on the seabed. From amongst the corpses still strapped inside he recovers a steel case containing four sealed flasks. The rogue diver manages to cut one of them open...but within twelve hours succumbs to a hideous death. Agency trouble-shooter Paul Richter is delegated to investigate the source of the mystery killer, but encounters far more questions than answers. Why has the CIA directed total destruction of the aircraft's remnants? Why is a hit team roaming the island to eliminate anyone with close knowledge of the missing flasks? Who is now picking off members of the hit team itself? And why are retired agents back in America getting professionally eliminated? As Richter gets ever closer to unravelling a decades-old secret, even he is unprepared for the sheer horror of the truth about to be disclosed.