It is 2023 and Alastair Taylor is hiding out in a hotel room in Tokyo. On the run from shadowy powers, he has fled Britain to the opposite end of the globe in search of safety. The world has changed around him: a newly independent Scotland is swimming in North Sea oil wealth, but a spill of huge proportions off the coast of Aberdeen, which Alastair is tasked with investigating, changes everything. He quickly begins to suspect that not everything is as it seems, and that a cover-up is in the offing. In the counsel of two colleagues, Joel, a gregarious accountant, and Trina, his boss's beautiful personal assistant, he begins to discover clues that hint at a much wider conspiracy. With echoes of post-Soviet Russia, Alastair realises where the balance of global power truly lies: but can he reveal the truth to the world in time to save himself?