Fearing for his life, journalist Philip Mangan has gone into hiding from the Chinese agents who have identified him as a Western spy. But when he is caught in a terrorist attack in East Africa and a shadowy Chinese figure approaches him with information on the origins of the attack, Mangan is suddenly back in the eye of the storm. Meanwhile, on a humid Hong Kong night, a key British Intelligence source is murdered minutes after meeting spy Trish Patterson. A sinister power is stirring that will use Mangan and Patterson as its pawns --- if they survive.

A lone man, Peanut, escapes a labor camp in the dead of night, fleeing across the winter desert of north-west China. Two decades earlier, he was a spy for the British; now Peanut must disappear on Beijing's surveillance-blanketed streets. Desperate and ruthless, he reaches out to his one-time MI6 paymasters via crusading journalist Philip Mangan, offering military secrets in return for extraction. But the secrets prove more valuable than Peanut or Mangan could ever have known...and not only to the British.