When the British High Commissioner is found dead in his Valletta residence, the file closes fast: natural causes, no further questions. Protocol officer Nora Kessler isn't so sure — not when the diplomatic pouch he received hours before his death turns up empty, and not when the one man sent to "e;assess the insurance claim"e; clearly isn't an insurance man at all.Julian Cole has his own reasons to distrust convenient explanations in Malta. Years ago, an operation on this island cost him a colleague he never found. Working with Nora against explicit instructions, he uncovers a truth neither of them wants: a Cold War intelligence pact called the Concordat, officially dissolved in 1991, never actually stopped operating — and it has just killed to protect itself again.As the two of them chase a decades-old ledger through Valletta's chapels, harbors, and embassy back-corridors, the danger stops being abstract. Someone is willing to frame Nora, silence witnesses, and rewrite the past to keep the Concordat's secrets buried. The closer she and Julian get to the truth, the closer they get to each other — and the more it costs them both to keep going.

When the British High Commissioner is found dead in his Valletta residence, the file closes fast: natural causes, no further questions. Protocol officer Nora Kessler isn't so sure — not when the diplomatic pouch he received hours before his death turns up empty, and not when the one man sent to "e;assess the insurance claim"e; clearly isn't an insurance man at all.Julian Cole has his own reasons to distrust convenient explanations in Malta. Years ago, an operation on this island cost him a colleague he never found. Working with Nora against explicit instructions, he uncovers a truth neither of them wants: a Cold War intelligence pact called the Concordat, officially dissolved in 1991, never actually stopped operating — and it has just killed to protect itself again.As the two of them chase a decades-old ledger through Valletta's chapels, harbors, and embassy back-corridors, the danger stops being abstract. Someone is willing to frame Nora, silence witnesses, and rewrite the past to keep the Concordat's secrets buried. The closer she and Julian get to the truth, the closer they get to each other — and the more it costs them both to keep going.