When Professor Rupert Scott refuses to accept an unexpected funding offer from Waleed Alghamdi, a Saudi diplomat with links to the richest oil producers in the world, things quickly turn nasty. The offer of huge funding is dependent on Scott abandoning his work to develop new applications for his late friend Mr Sato's super conductivity discovery- work which will help the world breaks its addiction to oil. Instead Alghamdi wants Rupert to adopt an 'oil friendly' research programme funded by a shadowy group of superrich Saudi oil men whose wealth means they believe they have no use for the rules by which everyone else must live.
The quest to find and save Helen starts in Cambridge then shifts to Italy and finally to a mafia stronghold in the remote Sicilian mountain town of Gangi. Here Helen is being held in a remote mountain top property guarded by Giuseppe - a giant of a man who has a rare genetic condition which means he feels no pain. Giuseppe is fiercely loyal to his mafia boss who is working with Alghamdi and his group of oil producers and would die before failing his Don.
Tuk Kae is faced with the challenge of locating Helen and then wresting her from the clutches of someone who she can't hurt and who won't back down.