Will Landon is a junior SIS officer. 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.

Meanwhile, ruthlessly ambitious Jill Sheridan - is engaged in some damage limitation of her own. 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 bottles of illicit "whiskey" that turn out to contain a poison that could wipe out half the population of London.