A plane brought down in flames. A dead man the only witness as the dominos start to fall...
On the Russian border with Afghanistan, the wreckage of a military transport plane lies half-submerged in a lake. Everyone on board is dead, only their charred remains left behind.
British intelligence operative Patrick Hyde, in hiding in Tajikistan, witnesses the tragedy. He discovers, to his horror, the identity of one of the bodies: Irena Nikitina, the wife of a high-ranking politician leading Russia’s liberalisation reforms.
But was her death an accident? Within the crumbling Soviet Union, not everyone is as supportive of reform as the Nikitins. A rogue group of Russians working with Western collaborators will lose everything if peace prevails, and are prepared to use any me...