Book Synopsis

Just as the United States and Panama prepare to sign a Commercial Agreement, Muriel Lomas, Panama's Attorney General, sends an e-mail containing a secret code and alludes he is marked for death. The next morning, news correspondent Kasper Giralt visits Lomas for an interview that will not happen. While he waits alone in the conference room, Giralt notices the office will throw a lunch birthday party for Lomas. After Kasper leaves the building, Tony Mota, a motorized delivery boy, brings more goodies for the celebration.

By three o'clock, the police cordon off the Public Ministry complex. Muriel Lomas and six others are dead, poisoned in the conference room. From here on, more murders ensue, apparently, to erase the tracks. Sam Cordell, a hardcore Panamanian Judicial Inspector, and Humphrey Cooper, an American ICE Special Agent, team up with the Giralt family to decipher the code and follow a trail of intrigue and espionage behind a massive conspiracy with irreversible strain in American-Panamanian relations.

In dissecting a powerful organized crime network, the extreme measures of eavesdropping and the shadow of deception unveil the historic footprint of a particular American-made surveillance system.