He is back after five long years' absence, the insubordinate, decent, bespectacled English spy who fought, fumbled, outwitted, and survived his outrageous way through the best-selling Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin, and the rest of those marvelous, celebrated Len Deighton spy thrillers. Once again he finds himself a reluctant habituT of that nightmare world of espionage where a triple cross is as commonplace and regular as the daily paper at the breakfast table.

Cocky, sardonic Charles Schlegel the third, Colonel U.S. Marine Corps Air Wing (retired), with the iron handshake and a flat refusal to let anything stand in his way, is brought in to run London's Strategic War Game Studies Centre. Under a joint Anglo-American naval warfare committee, military computers match NATO defense strategies against theoretical Russian strike threats. Schlegel appoints Deighton's spy hero his personal assistant.

A U.S. nuclear submarine returns from a forty-three day cruise deep under the Arctic ice pack to eavesdrop on the Soviet Undersea Warfare Command at Archangel, and the first sign of trouble occurs after disembarkation at the remote deep-water anchorage in western Scotland. On his way home, the unsuspecting ex-spy's car breaks down conveniently close to his old flat, where he breaks in to telephone for help.