Set at the dawn of the Cold War, this posthumous novel was inspired by author Richard Miles' contemporaneous experiences and his personal acquaintance with notorious Soviet spy Donald Maclean and revised by his niece Jill Rose.

"Curiously, I had never seen a dead body up close before, despite having served in a naval cruiser on the Arctic convoys in the early years of the war."

In September 1945, idealistic young naval Lieutenant Tom Davis is assigned by the British Embassy in Washington to investigate an apparent suicide. He becomes enmeshed in a daring scheme proposed by his charismatic superior Sylvan Ross to kidnap a leading nuclear scientist from Los Alamos and spirit him to Britain. As the plot unfolds, Tom is torn between his personal loyalty to Ross and his growing fear that his mentor is himself a Soviet spy. A close friend is killed, and an unexpected antagonist almost costs Tom his own life. Wrestling with moral issues for which there are no easy solutions, Tom lays his career and reputation on the line in the shocking finale.