Michael Vaux is out of the game. The ex-journalist and occasional MI6 secret agent is happy--house-sitting in Tangier for a former lover. But when the British Secret Service contacts him, he is persuaded to 'come in from the cold' once again. A high-ranking operative of al-Qaeda in the Muslim Maghreb [AQIM] wishes to defect, promising to give vital intelligence to MI6 that could prevent a series of terrorist bombings and kidnappings. But after the would-be defector's envoy is assassinated on the Paris-Madrid night train, Vaux finds himself combing the winding, narrow streets of old Tangier while butting heads with an over-zealous CIA officer. Meanwhile, the young MI6 agent sent to Tangier to help Vaux find the defector, is abducted outside a nightclub on Tangier's hot and sultry Corniche. Vaux's quest to find both his younger colleague and the would-be al-Qaeda defector pulls him beyond Tangier's city limits to exotic Melilla, a small Spanish enclave in North Africa and on to storied Casablanca. Faced with an ever more complicated series of deadly events, Vaux finds himself inexorably lured into a convoluted labyrinth of deceit and betrayal where double and triple agents pursue their own shadowy goals and the loyalty of even the most committed MI6 and CIA agents is not guaranteed.