'It's true what they say. That Americans have interests, but no friends.'

A CIA officer in Iraq, at odds with his own agency.

An Iraqi sheikh, whose alliance with the Americans has earned him many enemies, and few friends.

The former KGB officer tasked with the destruction of that alliance, once and for all. Project Arkhangel.

Anbar Province, Iraq. Early 2007.

After four years of war, with attacks escalating day by day and public support crumbling at home, the American effort in Iraq rests on one last gambit: a tenuous alliance with the Sunni tribes of Anbar to deny al-Qaeda sanctuary and take the fight to the terrorists. The Anbar 'awakening.'

Dispatched to Iraq to help cement the alliance, CIA Arabist and paramilitary Harry Nichols finds himself drawn into a world of shifting loyalties and allegiances, where nothing is certain--the word of a government, least of all.

As enemies gather, both without and within, he will be forced to make a final, desperate choice: his orders, or his honor?

And the fate of the awakening will rest in the balance.