It is the last month before Iraq is to invade Kuwait, and Saddam Hussein has instructed his scientists to stop at nothing to arm his nation with nuclear warheads. As Frederick Bissett, a disaffected British weapons scientist, is on the point of seizing the Iraqi bait, the only man to stand in the way of a total collapse of the Middle Eastern military balance is a young FBI operative, Bill Erlich – a man who has just seen a close friend gunned down by a terrorist, though, and is hard on the heels of the assassin. As he blunders into the lines by which the Iraqi puppet-masters control their undercover agents in England, he is faced with a last and inevitable confrontation and recognises that he has gone beyond the point of recall: he is engaged in what his FBI training has taught him to call ‘Condition Black’, lethal assault in progress.
