A supertanker goes missing in the Mozambique Channel. The president of Togo disappears from his mistress's bed in the middle of the night. The American police find that more than a ton of confiscated cocaine has vanished from an evidence locker in El Paso. Meanwhile, the Bourbon-Busset family, descendants of thirty kings and at least one pope, are busy exploiting these events and a few others elsewhere in the world. The coffers of Riyadh and Rome alike are open to them as they divert funds illegitimately claimed by national governments for their own purposes. Their target? A doctor whose research into a new antiviral holds out the possibility of eradicating HIV completely, but who is also unwilling to share his results for humanitarian purposes. He must be persuaded to do so. And if the family cannot persuade him, then they must find a way to bypass him altogether. The price of failure is twenty million dead.