Will Landon is a junior SIS officer, just important enough to represent the Service at the funeral: the head of the Asian department has commited suicide, and Landon's job is damage limitation. The first surprise is that the dead spy had a publicity agent of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the family. The second one is that SIS didn't know his sister-in-law even existed. So when she publicly accuses the Service of killing him, Landon braces himself for trouble - and soon finds it. In Florida, meanwhile, ruthlessly ambitious Jill Sheridan - the woman who means to head the service one day - is engaged in some damage limitation of her own, staying well out of the way as her lover's wife involves her in a very messy divorce. It's bad enough when someone tries to blackmail Jill by involving her in a pornographic movie. More importantly, though, how did an Islamic terrorist group find out where she was? It's finally Landon who makes the connection between these two incidents and two hundred and sixteen bottles of illicit "whiskey" that turn out to contain a poison that could wipe out half the population of London.