The brilliant new bestseller from the author of Last Light.
If he hadn't needed American citizenship so badly, Nick Stone wouldn't have agreed to do this one last job, but the CIA's offer of a new life in the United States, and the chance to share it with Carrie, the woman he's fallen in love with, is one he cannot refuse.
The job seems simple enough for a man of his particular skills: infiltrate the Islamic republic of Algeria, kill a money-laundering local businessman and bring back his severed head to the West. Stone isn't told why the man has to die like this, and he doesn't want to know. He just guesses it's got something to do with the democratic world's retaliation to the terrible events of September 11th.
But as events unfold alarmingly fast, Stone realizes that he has not been told the full story -- and that in reality the job has only just begun.
Operating in the dangerous underworld of the south of France, where al-Qaeda has begun to regroup, Stone is knee-deep in a very dirty war. In the most daunting mission he has yet undertaken, as one bloody twist leads to another, Stone ultimately finds himself confronted by the most desperate dilemma a man could ever face.