As the Second World War enters its final days, Jay Marsh is an eager young aide-de-camp to the great General MacArthur, helping him to engineer the Allies' triumph in the Pacific and the surrender of Japan. But the arrogant, majestic MacArthur has a more ambitions aim in mind: supreme control over Japan and its eighty-three million inhabitants. Trusted with his secrets, Jay becomes ensnared in a labyrinthine world of diplomacy, double-dealing and corruption, as he negotiates with the Japanese of behalf of his mentor and hero.

All the while he is unravelling the web of deceit that MacArthur and the royal courts and geisha houses of Japan would trap him in, Jay is desperate to get back to Manila and find his beautiful fiancée Divina Clara. But, as each side gets more desperate for power, Jay becomes a helpless pawn in a tragic game that is out of his control.