From the back cover: He’s a rogue agent—on the right side of freedom. Officially, he doesn’t exist. Working outside of the law and under the radar, Third Echelon special operative Sam Fisher takes risks the CIA and FBI won’t take. And he’s America’s number-one weapon in the war against terrorism. An old friend of Fisher’s, a former Justice Department investigator, is found dead of radiation poisoning. Trace amounts in the man’s body point Fisher to a poison so lethal that only a few countries produce it. Following the radiation trail, Fisher winds up in Kyrgyzstan, where a radical Islamic leader who dreams of the past will do anything in his power to ensure that the future is destroyed—by hitting the world where it hurts: oil.