The King of Macau

Macau is a tiny country. It's a modern-day Casablanca on the South China Sea: a bubbling cauldron of gamblers, gangsters, con men, hustlers, gunrunners, money launderers, and spies.

It's also a stronghold of Chinese organized crime, which makes it a dicey place for a white guy to go around asking too many questions.

Jack Shepherd is a lawyer, but he doesn't much like to admit it. He no longer lobbies government agencies, negotiates for corporations, or shows up in court. These days, he discreetly solves problems his big-money clients don't want anyone to know they have.

Shepherd is in Macau ducking Chinese gangsters and trying to find the source of the black money flooding his client's casino when he's approached by a Korean who knows that Shepherd still has high-level connections in Washington. The Korean claims he's connected to the very top of the North Korean government and wants Shepherd to get him political asylum in America.

He's already dealing with a ton of money that nobody wants him to find, and then this defector who has the keys to the North Korean kingdom falls into his lap. Either one is enough to get a man killed.

Now Jack Shepherd has both of them.