On the dark waterside docks of Shanghai, a photographer records cargo being secretly loaded. He's brutally killed and his camera destroyed. Two weeks later on the dangerous high seas, the U.S. Navy covertly tracks a Chinese ship rumored to carry tons of chemicals for Saddam Hussein to create new biological weapons. The President cannot let the ship reach Iraq. At the same time, he doesn't want the navy to attack and board it either, because decades of negotiations with China have at long last yielded a landmark human rights agreement that China is willing to sign. The President orders Fred Klein, head of Covert One, to find solid proof of what the Chinese ship is ferrying. Operative Col. Jon Smith is sent to rendezvous in Taiwan with another agent who has acquired the ship's true manifest. But the second agent is murdered, the proof is destroyed, and Smith is left only with a verbal message - the President's biological father is still alive, held a prisoner by the Chinese for fifty years. Smith must find the truth about the ship, a truth that probes the deepest secrets of the Chinese ruling party...
