Jack Valentine has been in the intelligence game too long and it is starting to show, but he accepts one more mission. He always does. It seems like a simple task but it starts to throw up questions and he doesn't know the answers. What were American Special Forces doing in Ireland twenty-five years ago and why does it matter now? What is the thread that leads from a deserted mountainside to the offices of the White House? Suddenly Valentine has information that everybody wants and he finds himself the quarry in a pitiless chase. To complicate matters he is joined by an old friend who is staying just ahead of his own deadly pursuit. And he draws an old flame into danger, because it seems that wherever Jack Valentine goes, innocence seems to suffer. Valentine no longer know which threatens him most - the dark alliance of men who want to kill him, the terrible storm crossing he is forced to undertake in a battered, converted trawler, or his own dangerous cynicism.