Lester Ferris, sergeant of the British Army, is a good man in need of a rest. He
's spent a lot of his life being shot at, and Afghanistan was the last stop on h
is road to exhaustion. He has no family, he's nearly 40 and burned out and about
to be retired. The island of Mancreu is the ideal place for Lester to serve out
his time. It's a former British colony in legal limbo, soon to be destroyed bec
ause of its very special version of toxic pollution - a down-at-heel, mildly lar
cenous backwater. Of course, that also makes Mancreu perfect for shady business,
hence the Black Fleet of illicit ships lurking in the bay: listening stations,
offshore hospitals, money laundering operations, drug factories and deniable tor
ture centres. None of which should be a problem, because Lester's brief is to si
t tight and turn a blind eye.
