The Phoenix

He used to be an intelligence officer in the Phoenix 5 division of the Intelligence and Research Wing. Then a counterterrorism operation led by Director General Amarjyot Bhushan went badly wrong, and he spent seven years in a high-security prison in Lakshadweep for it. Now he has been released, and the people who matter to him are his mother, his son and his wife.

His wife was attacked before she could run her newspaper's exposé on a bioweapon. He was last seen heading for Mumbai, intent on finding the people who hurt her. He is also carrying a secret assignment that offers him a way back. An international terror group is planning a bioweapon strike on the city on the anniversary of 26/11, and he has to stop it.

The Phoenix is a bleak espionage story about global terror, with sleeper cells, double agents, biological warfare and suicide attacks. Beneath the menace, though, it is more hopeful than it first appears, built on one man's love for his family and his country.