This is a novel about torture and the ethics of whether it can ever be justified. It is a book about the type of people who practice and justify the use of torture. It is a book about what tortures people. The Jihadists are setting up a dirty bomb in New York. The CIA are on to them but it is a race against time. They have to find them at all costs. Hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk. They pull in a number of suspects off the streets. One of them must know what is going on but they have been trained to resist. Can they be made to crack in time? What is it that makes a torturer different to the rest of us? What is justified when hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk? Out in the desert in an institution that does not exist there are no techniques barred. Nobody ever comes back from the realm of the disappeared. Can the end ever justify the means? The race is on.