Cheong Lao, a shadowy drug lord manipulates the world's narcotics' market from his island fortress off the Chinese coast, where he is reluctantly aided in his endeavours by teenage computer hacker Diane Grace Stewart. His young hostage is not with-out friends though. She works for the Blackeagle/Blackeagle Security and Investigations Corporation, and the employees of that elite paramilitary security company look after their own. Operatives in Hawaii, and Diane's own team-mates from New York's cell Kestrel, join forces to plan a rescue operation.

Yet even as the time for action draws near, they find a moment of quiet to appreciate a tale of daring about the tiny but dynamic Kelli L'Étrangère, leader of the Honolulu cell. It is the story of one small woman taking on the might of the Chinese security apparatus on her own. Opposed by the sadistic Doctor Sung, and hunted by the brilliant military strategist General Lee Yao, Kelli goes alone into the People's Republic of China to bring a political defector to the West through six hundred kilometres of enemy territory. In a tale featuring deceit and seduction, poetry and pain, love, duty and honour, she must keep herself and Xiang Bao from the clutches of Sung and deliver him safely across the border into Hong Kong. Ultimately, it is a story about two games of chess, as the Red Empire takes on the Jade Empress.