Ten days to zero-zero

Lowel had seen sudden deaths too often in his career, but they were slow motion compared to this. Martin convulsed against the sharp edge of the counter. Then the poisoned fragment touched him: once, on his left thigh, just below the hipbone. The naked woman turned aside, revealing a small white hourglass-shaped abdominal scar. To Lowel her body language was unmistakably a climber's going for the top of Everest. There is a new Camelot in Washington. Daniel Galbraith, the vigorous, poker-playing new US President, is determined to recapture America's lead in the battle for world public opinion on total nuclear disarmament. When the Soviet premier dares him to sign an agreement to get rid of all remaining strategic weapons in six months Galbraith counters with ten days! Within hours a high-tech female poisoner has been recruited to assassinate both himself and the Soviet leader. Galbraith faces 'International Halloween' - every spook in the world has a vested interest in seeing that a Zero-Zero Agreement never gets signed - and calls upon the only man he can trust to see him through: his oldest friend, and brother-in-law, Jack Lowel.