December 2001. A Zodiac inflatable slips away from a submarine off the Algerian coast. 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 is one he cannot refuse. The job seems simple enough for a man of his particular skills: kill a money-laundering local businessman and bring back his severed head to the West. But Stone has not been told the full story - in reality the job has only just begun. Operating in the dangerous underworld of the South of France, he is in at the deep end of a very dirty war. And 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.