Douglas Wheeler worked for the NSA as a Systems Analysis and wanted to leave. The NSA would not allow him to quit, so he stole some very damning documents on some very important people from the NSA and blackmailed the Agency into allowing him to depart. Douglas had traveled to England many times previous and when he won his freedom he immigrated there to write books. The NSA began a program of clandestine investigation into Douglas and where he had stored his files so they could retrieve them and prosecute Douglas for his crime. They could not kill Douglas, because they feared he had a trigger on the information. If they killed him the trigger would release the info to news and other organizations around the world, much like Edward Snowden (Douglas, in fact, trained Edward Snowden when Snowden came to work at the NSA). As long as Douglas was alive they could take their time in their investigation. But Douglas dies accidentally. And this sets in motion an intensive hunt for Douglas's stolen files.

A few very powerful men from Political Action Committees used their connections at the FBI to send a rogue team of FBI agents to intercept Douglas' stolen documents from the formal Security Council's investigators and destroy certain specific files incriminating their possible presidential candidate before the official investigative team can retrieve them. However, since the FBI only has National authority, not International authority, and could not legally investigate for themselves, the Rogue team manipulated our hero, the celebrated investigative reporter, Elliott Lawder, into going to England, under the guise of investigating a bogus drug ring, to see what he could uncover.