The world is about to change...In the months leading up to 9/11 the intelligence community is on high alert for terrorist threats. Former army officer Anthony Taverner is recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service for an apparently straightforward mission: to destroy a cache of the CIA's precious Stinger missiles in Taliban-held Afghanistan. But in the kaleidoscopic world of spying, nothing is what it seems. And as the struggle to avert a catastrophe begins, Taverner's allegiance is to an authority he must keep secret from even his closest allies.