'Leon, sacked from his position in the Department of Foreign Affairs, finds himself in the Tasmanian West Coast mining town Queenstown. Here he seeks to find himself a new life of semi-retirement, and doing some odd jobs. He meets Wendy.
'During one of his odd jobs, the renovation of an old house, he stumbles on a cache of coded Foreign Affairs documents from the 1960s. Because of his past life he realises the documents as being classified and highly sensitive. They indicate the presence of many nasty, ageing weapons secreted somewhere near Queenstown.
'Leon, with the aid of Wendy, Akers the local cop, Gail a journalist, Jack his old mate from Foreign Affairs, and Mark a student geologist, decides to investigate the possibility of the documents being authentic.
'The story follows a somewhat stumbling relationship, and the investigation which leads all the way to the High Court, the Defence Department, Foreign Affairs, the Attorney General, and the Prime Minister. Several people die during the plot by the government to bury the conspiracy of what lies in the bare hills of Queenstown.'(Publication summary)
