While at this school Salvo realizes that he has an unnatural talent for learning languages. When he leaves he is not only fluent in English and French but in Swahili and most of the smaller African languages.

Salvo takes this talent and moves to England where he becomes a British citizen and marries a beautiful and well known white journalist. His marriage is in a shambles and he begins an ardent affair with a young Congolese woman who is also a nurse at a nearby hospital.

Using his talent for languages Salvo becomes an interpreter who does so well that he is much in demand. He works for corporations, hospitals and law firms and finally part time for the British Secret Service.

While working in what is known as the "Chat" room, a basement where conversations from world wide are eavesdropped on, Salvo intercepts a call between Congolese warlords and the western men who would finance their wars. Salvo is caught in the middle. Should he stay true to England or to Congo the homeland of his lover and the mother he never knew?

As always John Le Carre is the Master of the British Spy Novel. The Mission Song is his twentieth novel, and at the wonderful age of seventy-five he can still pen a best seller that will hold the attention of one and all.