The Permanent Assurance

Set in modern Manhattan and the Middle East, The Permanent Assurance depicts how personal obsession, corporate profit, and political ambition collide over a project to rebuild war-torn Iraq.

Edward H. Rooney is a tyrannical executive at the world's largest financial firm, The Permanent Assurance, Inc. Near-fatal cancer has left him fixated on securing his legacy with a controversial investment in a Baghdad-based nonprofit. To obtain the necessary funds, Rooney manipulates his two most isolated employees: Thomas Drake, a bereaved and drug-addicted British expatriate, and Clarissa LaGrange, a brilliant but inscrutable underwriter.

As Drake and Clarissa work together, mutual loneliness leads to an illicit affair. However, the pair become increasingly vulnerable to Rooney's coercion, culminating in their release of hundreds of millions of dollars to a shady organization, the Coalition for Iraq. Wall Street and Washington celebrate the initiative, until the Coalition reveals its hidden agenda-a campaign of terror that plunges the couple, the corporation, and far more innocent parties into a hellish and hilarious abyss.