1947. England is deep in the coldest winter anyone can remember. It snows every day, temperatures do not rise above freezing for seven weeks, coal cannot get from the pitheads to the power stations, food and fuel are in desperately short supply.
More than that, the country's secret services have been penetrated, which means Britain is more vulnerable than ever. And Stalin knows it. He decides it is time to send his master of 'Special Tasks' to create a little extra chaos.
But he has a more important motive than mere disruption. There is a man named Klaus Fuchs who must be protected at all costs because he is a communist super-spy and has the secrets of the atomic bomb at his fingertips. And there is another who must be found and killed because of the threat he poses to Fuchs.
Freya Bentall, a senior MI5 officer, understands the danger but knows that the security service has been compromised and no longer knows who to trust. She has to bring in an outsider whose loyalty is beyond question - Tom Wilde. His task: to find the traitor in MI5 and protect his adopted country.
Information from a foreign source suggests there is a double agent with a link to Cambridge University. Freya Bentall has three main suspects and Wilde must get close to them all. That means delving deep into the criminal underworld, attaching himself to the cultural elite of the arts and finding a way into the extreme reaches of British politics.
As violence erupts, Wilde faces an uphill battle to protect those he loves from merciless killers.
From the devastating nuclear bomb tests at Bikini atoll to a remote safe house in rural Norfolk, Wilde knows that one slip will spell disaster for both his family and the country.
