The Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal are typical tropical islands, always warm with cooling sea breezes.
None of this mattered to Leasa Easting an Australian widow who was stranded in Port Blair, down on her luck and her money.
She is befriended by Alnos, a government official who gets her a job as an assistant on a research vessel cruising the Indian Ocean.
He too goes along for the cruise.
The unsuspecting Leasa and the other assistants have no idea that the research was sponsored by the North Korean Government, is to develop 'poison gas' for use on long range missiles.
Lease finds to her astonishment, that her late husband had led a double life, as a spy for the Australian government, and now that she knows her life is in grave danger.
Her life and the voyage appear doomed, but for a loose alliance, formed by a few strangers, needing a lot of luck.