“I need your support. There is no one else I can trust. Please help her. Please help our daughter.”When ex-Marine Jack Ford receives a letter containing news of a daughter he never knew he had, he feels compelled to return to China, a country he hasn’t visited since 1989 when, as a young American spy, he fell in love with a beautiful student activist and found himself caught up in the horrors of the Tiananmen Square massacre. But why has Xia got in touch now, after a thirty-year silence?On arrival in Beijing, Jack finds himself accidentally in possession of an explosive piece of information both the Chinese and American governments are desperate to get their hands on. Alone in a strange city, suspected of being a traitor by his own side, not knowing whom to trust, Jack is faced with an impossible dilemma: should he save his new-found daughter or prevent a new world war from breaking out?
Jack Flint receives a letter with a hand-printed address and a rectangle of Chinese stamps. It is from Xia, a Chinese woman he knew a quarter of a century ago – when he was an American spy, and she was a student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The letter will lead him back to China, and back into his past.