When Steven Dunbar is called upon to investigate the bizarre murders of two UK medical scientists at the top of their fields, he finds it difficult to see anything they had in common. On paper, they had never even met. When a French banker in Paris, a Swiss World Health Organisation strategist in Geneva and an Israeli microbiologist in Beer Sheva meet a similar fate, the only link Steven can see is money. At some point in the recent past, all of them have become suddenly and secretly rich and Russian oligarchs - expats living in London - have something to do with that.As Steven's investigation expands on a global scale, the intelligence services of several countries become involved, fearing some world-wide conspiracy. Steven's peace of mind is further challenged when his partner, Tally, a doctor at a London children's hospital, decides to join the fight against the killer Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo where yet another epidemic of the disease has broken out. She feels that not enough is being done by Western governments to prevent the situation worsening to become an international pandemic. She is to discover that Steven is not the only one coming up against a conspiracy, one that is to put both their lives in danger and threatens to unleash undreamt-of horror on the world.