The Honorable Woman

Nessa Stein is a beautiful and powerful Anglo-Israeli businesswoman who strives for equality and peace in the Middle East, heading up the powerful Stein Foundation with her brother Ephra. With their actions closely monitored by Whitehall and the secret intelligence agencies, both at home and abroad, tensions increase when the young son of the nanny employed by Ephra, is kidnapped.

With the hunt on for Atika's son, the head of MI6's Middle East desk Sir Hugh Hayden-Hoyle starts to look into who killed Meshal and why. However, Julia tells him to look in a different direction which means turning his attention to Nessa. As more of Nessa's past is uncovered, she receives a mysterious phone call from a man who threatens to divulge her secrets.

The mysterious phone calls to Nessa become regular, threatening the kidnapped child's safety. Israeli family friend Shlomo Zahary has been rejected by Nessa as a future business partner on the grounds she believes she has uncovered corruption in his past. And Nessa's security advisor follows a lead he believes will help him uncover the identity of Kasim's kidnappers.

Going back eight years, we see a younger Hayden-Hoyle making his way to the top of the spy business via an affair with current MI6 chief, Dame Julia Walsh who herself has made a pact with the ambitious Monica Chatwin who is now eyeing the top job. We also see how Ephra once controlled the Stein Empire and Nessa's consequent abduction in Gaza with Atika.

Returning to the present day, it is Atika and Nessa's secret that the mysterious telephone voice is using to threaten Nessa. Meanwhile, at a University in Israel a computer science professor uncovers a corrupt admissions policy whereby Arab students are being denied places on courses in favor of Israelis.

Kasim's life hangs in the balance as a new Palestinian businessman demands a partnership in Nessa's business in return for the boy's safety. The rejected Israeli, Shlomo Zahary, having proved his innocence from corruption and now in tandem with Hayden-Hoyle, begins to investigate exactly how the wiretap was initiated. Saleh Al-Zahid arrives in London intent on an unknown deadly purpose.

Realizing Israeli powers had only ever wanted to use the Stein name, company and connections for their own political and intelligence affairs, Nessa angrily forges ahead with the data cabling initiative in partnership with Palestinian Jalal El-Amin. Events take a dark course when during a visit to the West Bank to launch the latest phase of data cabling, a bomb detonates.

Hayden-Hoyle realizes that Nessa has been manipulated to become a martyr by both Monica Chatwin, working for the Americans and Jalal El-Amin, working for the same Palestinian cell as Atika and Al-Zahid. He also discovers that Samir Meshal had been murdered by the Americans to stop this revelation.