Rammed and sunk by a mysterious merchant ship off the West coast of Ireland, Jim Prendergast survives the sinking of his yacht, Larinita, but his wife and daughter are drowned. The tragedy comes to the attention of Jonathan Cooke, a shadowy figure in the British Embassy in Dublin, who suspects that the merchant ship was transporting weapons for a maverick IRA unit who are planning to derail the peace talks with one final act of terror. Manipulated by MI6, Prendergast is dragged unwittingly into a world of intrigue that indirectly leads him to the man responsible for the deaths of his wife and daughter until he is finally able to reap his revenge in a violent and bloody confrontation on the high seas.