Paul Birchard

A highly skilled trio of Chinese officers arrive in London, they’re here for 48 hours and Section D must discover what it is they’ve come for and why? Beth has been grooming an asset, Kai, from inside the Chinese Security Services and, determined to prove herself useful to the op, she activates him to help find out the snatch team’s aims. But is he ready? The Team must infiltrate Chinese security, which is world renowned for being impenetrable, to discover what is so important that they are here in London to repatriate. Ruth goes undercover at a research facility called QMK and discovers that the Chinese have come for a woman, Jiang Lee, a scientist who has developed a de-salinisation technique worth billions and whom Britain ‘poached’. This intellectual property is key to the UK and the US - in an atmosphere of economic degradation, these advances keep the UK at the top table.

The pressure is on for Beth when she goes undercover for MI5 for the first time. She is tasked with protecting a influential oil baron, Robert Westhouse, when the Team receive intel that an assassination attempt will be made on him at a meeting of top oil dealers. But an unexpected ambush throws things off course, and threatens to dredge up her murky mercenary past. Meanwhile, Lucas visits someone who never expected they would see him again.

The President is on his way to London to chair top secret peace talks between Israel and Palestine, under the guise of his first state visit. Hopes are high for an agreement: he’s the toughest President in years and the Home Secretary tasks Section D with keeping the talks on track. Beth and Dimitri must keep their wits about them as they go undercover as Home Office liaison officers to keep the sensitive delegates apart - Dimitri will look after the Israelis and Beth the Palestinians. But when a journalist threatens to publish the story it’s clear someone somewhere is trying to jeopardise the talks. Ruth stops the journalist, but the Team must find the source of the leak. Tariq traces calls made to the journalist via Lebanon and a flat in London, where Lucas finds maps and plans of the hotel. It looks like they’ve found a base of operations for an assassination attempt- someone wants to kill the President. When Hutri, a Lebanese paramilitary, turns up at the flat it looks like they’ve found their man and Lucas makes chase, but Hutri escapes after nearly strangling Lucas.

When Russia accuses the Azakstan Freedom Front of murdering ethnic Russians and invades the ex-Soviet State in a move reminiscent of historical oppression, Towers bans members of the AFF from Britain's shores. This obvious ploy to curry favour with Britain’s new ‘ally’, Russia, is much to Harry’s distaste. Lucas and Viktor - an FSB officer - are sent to Azakstan, surveilled by the Grid to destroy the last known sample of the outlawed nerve agent, Paroxocybin. They succeed in destroying the sample, but when the AFF men and woman are mercilessly killed by the Russian agents, Lucas and Harry are disgusted. Harry makes a controversial decision when he sees one of the AFF men, Aibek, ‘escaping’ and deliberately allows him to run.

MI5 are thrown into a cyberterrorism nightmare when an American Predator drone on loan to the UK in Afghanistan is hacked by the Taliban and turned on a US army camp, killing American soldiers. Relations between the CIA and MI5 are stretched to say the least and Beecher - head of the CIA in London - arrives on the Grid to oversee installation of the US’s advanced cybersecurity system ‘Cybershell’ to stop any future disasters. Lucas, out in the field, is tasked with protecting and delivering to the Grid Daniella Ortiz, the young ex-hacker turned White House cryptographer who holds the installation codes.