Zanthius De Lombardo is a womanizing, home-wrecking, self-absorbed, inconsiderate screwup. But all that is about to change. After the failure of his marriage and a suicidal bout with alcoholism, he lands a job as the HR director for a government-run energy company, where he expects nothing more than watercooler gossip and maybe a casual office romance.Instead, Zanthius discovers the business trip he has been sent on is a one-way journey with no return ticket needed, and that the energy company he works for is a front for a consortium of off-book government assassins and spies. When Zanthius doesn't die after swallowing a capsule containing a world-changing formula-as was expected of the 'idiot spy'-he finds himself caught up in a game of international espionage as world governments race to get their hands on the secret formula for the Carbon Factor, a powerful, cheap dirty bomb that fits in a half-gallon milk carton. While attempting to keep the Carbon Factor formula from falling into the wrong hands, Zanthius's once lackluster life is suddenly filled with spies, crooked politicians, terrorist groups, a secret government society, mercenaries, and the threat of death at every turn. He has a passionate romance with a spy who later becomes his wife, and he discovers from his mother shocking revelations about his father, Ben Beckmire, who, along with eleven of his friends, comes to his rescue. Little by little, the 'idiot spy' becomes the man he is meant to be. But is it enough to save the world?