This is book 6 of the "David Audley" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

One of the stranger in the series, though still quite good. I've also got a general page on Anthony Price.

The viewpoint character is an American dentist working for the Air Force and the CIA. He and his (American) "wife" never sound quite right, though now and then the insights are interesting.

We first meet Audley on the beach, with his wife and daughter, building a sand castle (and a first-rate one) and reciting Ozymandias. Familiar readers will recognize them far before they're explicitly identified.

The CIA wants to enlist Audley clandestinely (without his own knowledge, even) to help find Badon Hill for them. Because they think that has something to do with an operation they hear the Russians will run against them in Britain. Operation Bear.

The Russians are, unfortunately, about six steps ahead of everybody, and they come close to causing a scandal that would get the CIA essentially kicked out of Britain. Our old friend Nikolai Panin is behind it, of course; but only the CIA has head that, and they don't seem to know enough about Panin. If Audley had known earlier it would have helped.

Included in the death toll are two British operatives (nobody we've met before) who are killed because they've followed Finsterwald to a rendezvous either too well, or not well enough. The brits never do hear about how that happened; they're written off as part of the KGB death toll.

This book has the first appearance of Mrs. Francis Fitzgibbons. She's operating in a role parallel to Hugh Roskill, questioning Shirley while he questions Mosby.