In London, Jim Beauregard, a young manager at an import trading firm is having problems with shipments coming from mainland Chinese factories. In Hong Kong, Theo Scrimple, a washed-up expatriate police inspector, is alerted to a murder plot by a bar-girl who then turns up dead. Although it's not his case, he tries to investigate. Inadvertently the two protagonists begin unravelling an ambitious conspiracy of Chinese businessmen and generals that could change the entire political map of Asia.