A covert counterterror operation code-named Wildlife is to be mounted on the Rock of Gibraltar. This one is right off the books; the target code-named PUNTER. Kit Probyn, an upright Foreign Office veteran with a safe pair of hands and no previous experience of the dark arts, will be the minister's eyes and ears on the ground. Toby Bell, a rising Foreign Office star and the minister's personal private secretary, has been kept out of the loop. Why? There are whispers of private armies, bounty, dicey intelligence, corporate wars. 2011: A disgraced Special Forces soldier who took part in Wildlife delivers a message from the dead. The worlds of Toby Bell and Kit Probyn collide.