Nicholai Hel born in the ravages of World War I China to an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father, raised in the spiritual gardens of a Japanese Go Master, he survives the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world's most artful lover and its most accomplished--and highly paid assassin. Genius, mystic, master of language and culture, Hel's secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection ... Shibumi. Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his magnificent Eurasian mistress--He'll faces his most sinister enemy--a supermonolith of espionage and monopoly. The battle lines are drawn. Ruthless power and corruption on one side and on the other ... Shibumi.