The CIA is on edge. All surveillance chatter indicates that something is coming at the United States: perhaps another 9/11, maybe something even more catastrophic. The Agency discovers only bits and pieces of information - nothing concrete, such as a date or a location. Then the body of CIA agent Louis Updegraf turns up in Mexico, victim of an apparent assassination. The dead man had tapped into the communications of the Chinese embassy, but no one can figure out why. Kirk McGarvey is serving as a visiting professor at the University of Florida when an old friend at the Agency asks him to help figure out the connection between China land the murdered agent. Feeling the pull of action, McGarvey is soon up and running.Multinational players are coming together south of the U.S. border. The only way into their shadowy world is through a mysterious Iranian dancer, Shahrzad Shadmand.Part femme fatale, part unfortunate victim of circumstance, the time she spent with a cruel and hedonistic Chinese general could hold the answers McGarvey needs. But is she leading him toward the truth or are her stories nothing more than a cunning misdirection? Caught In a kill-or-be-killed spy game, he must find out whom he can trust and who is manipulating events from behind the scenes. Read Less