A Japanese cargo ship cruises the eastern Atlantic near the Azores - when it bursts into flames. A gang of pirates speeds to take advantage of the disaster - but their boat explodes. What on earth is happening? what does it have to do with the kidnapping of a top scientist from the streets of Geneva? With the defection sixty years ago of a mysterious Russian? With the discovery of an extraordinary underwater graveyard of ships of planes littered across the sea floor?