"Opium" is the story of a world-weary young American, Cyrius Chase, who has spent a sustantial part of his thirty-something years in the Middle East. Formerly a low-level drug-runner along the Afghanistan / Iran border, he is now living in New York and keeping a low profile as a simple hotel clerk. But in the new age of mass terror Chase's past inevitably cathches up with him, and he finds himself on a quest that thrusts him throug three continents where is confronted by drug dealers and assassins, Middle Eastern agents and embittered Western converts to islam, as well as powerfull Moslem Shiite clerics who run the clandestine arm of one of the most insidious security services ever assembled. finding himself in this maze of intrigue, murder and double-deals, he sees no option but to play a lethal end-game in the heart of the Axis of Evil.