August 9, 1945. Nagasaki, Japan. Yotaro Kawai and his family walk in the dusk of summer. Suddenly, a flash...bright light...a screaming silence...and finally, nothingness. The atomic bomb has dropped. Yotaro's family is dead. Yotaro himself is left alone in the rubble, grossly disfigured for the rest of his years.

Flash forward to today: Driven by white-hot hatred of a United States that has forgotten their fifty-year-old sins, Yotaro Kawai has become a major figure on today's international crime scene, with one last wish: to avenge the Nagasaki tragedy for his family, his countrymen, and himself.

Enter Marcus Malone, a middle-aged ex-CIA agent, with nothing to call his own but a failed business venture and marriage. Called out of retirement to stop Kawai, Malone has to lay it all on the line for one last mission. He must give his name, the woman he loves, and his very identity to track down a madman in a criminal world where no moment is safe and no memory will go unpunished.