The next book in the acclaimed Cormack and Woodward series, set during the Berlin Blockade of 1948, which has sometimes been described as the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 1940s, where a highly volatile situation could easily have developed into a full-blown conflict. Cormack arrives in Berlin to take over a new post as the head of a counter-intelligence unit whose job is both to detect Soviet agents and to deal with Black Market activity. He is soon re-united with his old friend Woodward, who is involved in the Airlift, and the two find themselves in the middle of an undercover operation in which an ex-Nazi assassin has been smuggled into Berlin. But who has he been sent to kill, and why? Their investigations lead them into discovering the shadowy outlines of a conspiracy whose plans, if successful, could lead to millions of deaths... and some of the conspirators seem to be their own superiors. Not knowing whom they can trust, Cormack and Woodward somehow have to prevent the assassination taking place. They do not even know who the victim is to be, nor where or when it is to happen, but the price of failure is World War Three...