Summer 1914. In the quiet, hallowed halls of the British Foreign Office, junior clerk Raymond Clinton believes he is serving the cause of peace. He meticulously transcribes a top-secret naval treaty with Germany, a document designed to prevent the very war that looms over Europe. His world is one of polite society, diplomatic ink, and the unshakeable certainty of the British Empire. But his idealism makes him the perfect pawn for the devastatingly charming Count Von Hoffman?a man he considers a friend, but who is in reality a ruthless Tsarist master spy.
In one catastrophic act of betrayal, Hoffman leaks the treaty. Citing it as a provocation, a massive Franco-Russian invasion force strikes the south coast of England. With the Royal Navy deliberately lured away on false orders, the nation is defenceless. The unthinkable has happened.
Coastal towns are transformed into scenes of unimaginable slaughter at the hands of brutal Cossacks. London, the heart of the Empire, collapses into a nightmare of mob rule, anarchist bombings, and the horror of martial law. As Britain bleeds, the conflict explodes across the globe. The United States, horrified by the atrocities, prepares to dispatch a massive expeditionary force to intervene, while Germany, in a stunning twist, launches its own colossal offensive into France to open a vital second front.
Consumed by a devastating guilt for the part he played, Raymond Clinton abandons everything he once believed in. Forsaking his duty as a volunteer soldier, he embarks on a desperate, solitary manhunt through a shattered nation to find Hoffman and exact his revenge. To catch a spy, the quiet clerk must become a new kind of weapon?a ruthless hunter operating in the shadows of a new kind of war.
As American and British soldiers wage a bloody battle to reclaim the coastline, the fate of the nation may ultimately rest on one man's quest for redemption. Can a man of paper and ink become sharp enough to cut the puppet master's strings, or will his vengeance cost him the very world he is trying to save?
