7 Seconds

7 Seconds, is a 2009 crime fiction novel by author Jack Henderson, and the sequel to The Circumference of Darkness. The story concerns a global conspiracy to hide weapons of mass destruction. Published under Sphere, an imprint of the Penguin Group.

Plot
In early 2003, an ousted United Nations weapons inspector is assassinated on the eve of a bombshell press conference. Rumours surface that this man had been passed damning evidence of a worldwide cabal of unimaginable power and wealth, and of their endgame that the coming war was meant to set in motion. It was the stuff of the wildest conspiracy theories: a global elite engineering the crash of financial markets, the soaring prices of food and energy, the numbing of the general population through a manufactured climate of fear. With the murdered man discredited and his evidence destroyed, all of it would soon be forgotten.

But two intertwined parts of a coded text survived the assassination. One half is in the hands of a young female operative, Jeannie Reese, already on the run from her own dark past. The other is delivered to the only man alive, Phr33k, capable of unlocking its promise: a long-suppressed technology that could either usher in a new age of peace for all mankind, or become the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.