Pakistan, India and the Bomb

The year is 1972. India, her heads of state increasingly under the influence of the Soviet Union, is on the verge of building and detonating her first nuclear bomb.

For Pakistan, the idea is intolerable. The country has fought three wars with India since achieving independence in 1947-a fourth seems preferable to a nuclear enemy.

Akbar Chaudry, the head of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence operations in India, wants a seasoned operative to monitor India's nuclear program. Instead, he gets Asaf Ali Khan, an engineering professor more suited to academic research than high-stakes espionage.

Chaudry privately hopes Khan will screw up, forcing the ISI to replace him with a real spy. In the meantime, he assigns the professor to handle his recruits in the nuclear program-a disgruntled engineer and an idealistic but misguided secretary.

Donovan Griffin knows nothing of this. He's a sales representative for an American firm operating in India. His only concerns are meeting his quotas and hoping his wife can come to terms with life in a third-world country. A chance meeting is about to plunge him into a rapidly evolving game of spy and counterspy, with the political stability of the Asian subcontinent at risk.