Tom Clancy returns to Jack Ryan's early days, in an extraordinary novel of global political drama.

Long before he was President, Jack Ryan was a novice CIA analyst. One of his first assignments was to debrief a Soviet defector who told of a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II. In the end, however, not only the Pope's life, but the stability of the entire Western world would be at stake.

Beth Powell and Susie Wright grew up together and were best friends. But fate intervened and separated them. It's twenty-nine years later when they meet again. Susie is a down-and-out who has shot two people in cold blood, and Beth is the lawyer allocated to defend her. And as Beth prepares her defence by trawling through her old friend's tragic past, she has to face her own demons. Yet the love both women had for one another as children is still there, even as the evidence against Susie mounts up. A love which must be stronger than the traumas of their past...