When a half-dead man is picked up by a British patrol at the Iraqi border he is found to have suffered a rare reaction to the smallpox vaccine. But why are the Iraqi's noculating their population against a disease which has been eradicated for twenty years?
Soon after this, a young Iraqi student at the Institute of Molecular Science in Edinburgh kills himself for no evident reason. At first there seems to be no connection. But then Adam Dewar, investigating the movement of smallpox virus DNA fragments between UK research institutes, stumbles on the horrific possibility that the Iraqis could have asked the student to reconstruct the virus from the DNA fragments he had been working on. With the continued presence of the Iraqi secret service in the city, Dewar can only conclude that they are waiting for somebody else to finish the job.
And then the smallpox breaks out on the Muirhouse Estate, one of the most destitute and densely populated areas in Edinburgh. The priority is to contain the virus, but with riots breaking out on the estate, the Iraqis still waiting and the death toll rising, Dewar is in a race against time to discover the source of the disease and prevent it falling into the hands of a hostile nation. A nation which would be only too willing to hold the world to ransom...

"McClure's forte is to take an outside-chance medical possibility, decide on worst possible outcome ... and write a book" - The Scotsman