State of terrorism

After a turbulent period in American politics, a new administration is sworn in, and to everyone's surprise, the president has chosen a political enemy for the vital post of Secretary of State. There is no love lost between the US President and Ellen Adams, his new Secretary of State. But it's a smart move by the president. With this appointment, he has silenced one of his harshest critics, as accepting the job means Adams must step down as head of her multinational media conglomerate. As the new president addresses Congress for the first time, with Secretary Adams in attendance, Anahita Dahir, a young Foreign Service Officer on the Pakistan desk at the State Department, receives a puzzling text message from an anonymous source. Too late, she realizes the message was a hastily coded warning. What began as a series of apparent terrorist attacks turns out to be the beginning of an international chess game involving the volatile and byzantine politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran; the race to develop nuclear weapons in the region; the Russian mafia; a nascent rogue terrorist organization; and a US government on its heels on the international stage.