'The Germans mustn't know. Not on any account. They mustn't know he's gone; they mustn't know we're looking for him; they mustn't know there's been a leak'

The missing man: Harting, refugee background, a Junior Something in the British Embassy in Bonn. The missing files: forty-three of them, all Confidential or above. The timing: appalling and probably not accidental; radical students and neo-Nazis rioting; critical negotiations in Brussels.

London's security officer Alan Turner is sent to Bonn to find the missing man and files as Germany's past, present and future threaten to collide in a nightmare of violence.