'No one saw who threw the fire-bomb. It arched over the crowd, hit the lights on the top of the police car, broke and sent burning fuel over the vehicle. A deep collective sigh went up from those at the front of the crowd, but no one moved as the police driver and his partner scrambled to safety.'

In the oppressive heat of summer, Luc Hansen, a senior agent in the European Union's security and intelligence directorate, uncovers a covert CIA operation in which a neo-con group of ageing Americans are fomenting ethnic unrest in Europe, and are willing to use Predator drones and nerve gas against Syrian civilians in an attempt to force their Iranian nemesis to Europe so that they can kill him. In a shadowy world in which different versions of the truth exist, all communications are compromised and no one is quite who they seem, Hansen has to use all his skills just to stay alive.