As Hong Kong readies itself for return to China in 1997, powerful business interest, including the Mafia, brace for the ramifications... and are prepared to do anything to stop the lease to England from expiring. In London, Brigadier General Charles Ferguson has learned of the existence of the Chungking Covenant, a secret document that was negotiated in China in 1944 by Lord Mountbatten with Mao Tse-tung. In it, Mao had agrees to extend the Hong Kong Treaty by one hundred years in return for arms and assistance in his war with Japanese. In Hong Kong, sinister business interests have also learned of the document's existence. With the delicate balance of Sino-British-American relations at risk, Sean Dillon, the brilliant former terrorist turned hero of Thunder Point, and Ferguson are under direct orders from the prime minister to stop the document from coming to light...at all costs.

Jack Higgins is the author of the action-adventure thrillers Night of the Fox, Luciano's Luck and The Year of the Tiger, as well as the mega-selling The Eagle has Landed, which became a major motions picture. He also writes under the pen names of Martin Fallon, Hugh Marlowe, and James Graham.