After a chance skirmish with an armed killer in central London, agent John Mordred ends up in hospital, condition critical.

Six weeks and a full recovery later, he's persuaded it's purely a police matter, one he should forget about.

But nothing in MI7 is ever that simple. There's more to this particular incident than meets the eye and unnamed people in high places want it investigating. They believe Mordred's the man for the job.

Add to the mix five missing IMF officials, the kidnapping of a top British financier in Venezuela, evidence of a related cover-up in Whitehall, a young and unpredictable London Lord Mayor with acute delusions of grandeur, plus - most bizarrely - persistent rumours of local UFO sightings. Things threaten to spin radically out of control.