Agent Tom Quinn is stuck outside his security sealed house. Girlfriend Ellie and her daughter Maisie are inside, with his booby-trapped laptop. The timer on the detonator reaches zero, and a huge explosion rips through a London street. Another London street. Tom, Ellie and Maisie are all OK. The detonator failed, but the same group who doctored Tom’s computer have used it as distraction for a car bomb attack on the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland . The Minister is dead. Ellie decides to end her relationship with Tom.

Shortly afterwards there’s another explosion at a top secret military base.  Although the attacks initially appear connected, it’s soon clear the second is the work of known terrorist, the Serbian Miroslav Gradic. Gradic is getting his information from a sympathiser planted in the Serbian Embassy, Rado. He’s their route to Gradic.

A film buff, Rado regularly rents videos. Zoe is set up in a video shop business, ably assisted by new recruit, Sam. She soon wins Rado over with her feminine whiles and excellent range of European cinema. He’s sending coded messages to Gradic via classified ads in the Evening Standard. The team needs to know what those messages are, so Zoe goes into the breach with a pair of bugged cufflinks and a control document.

The plan works beautifully. The team realise with horror that Gradic has found out when and where a secret COBRA meeting is taking place. These meetings gather together all the major military leaders of the country. The session is moved at the last minute, and only Tom waits to apprehend Gradic.

He was due to be sent to the Hague for a war crimes trial, which looked like a cushy number for a man who had caused such misery and destruction. Harry manipulated his papers, and sent him to Egypt , with records showing him as a paedophile. Gradic would get a fitting punishment.