About the book Sophia Gemaye—young, beautiful, passionate—is a freedom fighter in the cause of an oppressed minority. After an airline bombing goes horribly wrong, Sophia devises a brilliant new plan to bring world attention to her people’s plight: sabotage the world’s currency markets, where more than a trillion dollars trade daily, bringing even the mightiest corporations and governments to their knees. Her scheme will be neither cheap nor easy. Money she gets from some dubious backers, but she also needs highly secret financial information. For this, she heads to IMFO—the International Monetary and Financial Organization, located on Nineteenth Street, N.W., in Washington D.C. At IMFO, Sophia woos the disarmingly attractive Harry Hoffinger, whose cutting-edge computer model is crucial to Sophia’s plan. But Sophia’s penchant for confidential data—and for Harry—catches the eye of Celine O’Rourke, an embittered IMFO veteran,whose dogged pursuit of Sophia’s secret takes her from riot-torn streets of Jakartato, the corridors of power in Washington and the hallowed halls of the Palais in Geneva. As the financial markets crumble, and the lives of key finance ministers hang in the balance, both women will learn the price of love—and the cost of betrayal.

Nineteenth Street N.W. by Brett Wood (an excerpt)

As Sophia returned to her magazine, immersing herself in the horoscope section, she felt a gentle tug at her sleeve. It was a little girl, perhaps eight or nine, with a face so angelic it made Sophia suspicious at once of the mischief it must conceal. Sophia reached into her bag and pulled out a roll of toffees. The girl smiled and took one, and after a moment’s hesitation, took a second and popped it into her pocket. Then, like two grandees exchanging gifts, she proffered Sophia a scruffy pad of paper on which she’d drawn a noughts and crosses grid, but the child’s mother spotted her and drew her back with an apologetic smile. Sophia wanted to protest, to say, No, it’s all right. I’d like to play, but she was suddenly assailed by nausea, feeling at once hot and cold, her forehead clammy to the touch.

She was filled with revulsion at what was going to happen. People—real people—were going to die when the bomb exploded. People like the couple beside her, the businessman with his pathetic leering stares, the pert air hostess squeezing down the aisle, the little girl, now back in her own seat, playing happily with her mother.

Unbidden, unwanted, a memory hit Sophia with a jolt. It was the photo of an airline crash she’d once seen many years ago on the cover of Paris Match. Every detail of the image was carved into her mind: the carcass of the plane lying incongruously in a golden field, its belly ripped open as though savaged by some great beast, its metallic bones strewn indifferently across the countryside. There had been a fire, and the burnt bodies of the passengers lay around the wreckage. A doll had remained miraculously intact, its skin horribly pink against the seared flesh of its owner.

Glancing back at the little girl through the cracks between the seats, Sophia shuddered at the thought of this child being handled by the salvage crew with rubber gloves, stuffed into a body bag like some obscene biological specimen. Oh, dear God, how did I get into this?

But she knew.

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