Mid-summer 1942 and at last Killers agent Andy Ballantine returns from the Far East to report to John Standish. Emaciated and exhausted, Ballantine spills out the fragments of his incredible story—the Japanese invaders who stole like ghosts through the Malayan jungle—the British military incompetence which led to the fall of Singapore—the brutality of Ballantine's old enemy, the sadistic secret policeman Mizikawa—the terrors of the jungle where every flickering shadow held the promise of a knife in the back ...