Kusanagi, the priceless sword of the Japanese crown jewels, that must be at the coronation of every Japanese emperor, is missing. Danny, a Navy SEAL out of his element, is in London to sell a precious artefact - a gold ingot from an ancient sea wreck off the coast of Japan. Jim Evans, retired whizz kid trader, is young and impossibly rich. Through a chance meeting in a London auction house with Danny he acquires the gold ingot and realises it is just the tip of a huge medieval fortune. To Akira Nakabashi, curator of the Japanese Imperial treasures, the gold ingot represents the key to his life, the honour of his family and the future of his country. In downtown Tokyo, Basho Kim's vast property empire is about to implode and he will go to any lengths to obtain the fortune he needs to save it. Fate, ambition and greed come together in the search for Kusanagi - a prize of such incalculable value that it carves a trail of destruction from Tokyo to London to all those who covet it.

A billion dollars is a lot of money but not for Jim, a trading whizz kid. While buying into a new mine in Congo his broker has gone missing in the Jungle. Mycock is a shady mining promoter who will stop at nothing to part speculators with their money. Barron Mining could be just the killing he has always planned. 'Man bites Dog' is a Congolese child soldier, trapped and enslaved by a conflict of unprecedented brutality.In The Twain Maxim their paths cross under the malevolent gaze of Nyiragongo, Africa's most volatile volcano as the lure of untold mineral riches sets off a trail of devastation.