Charles Thoroughgood, hero of Alan Judd''s classic A Breed of Heroes, has left the army to be trained by MI6 in the arts of the Cold War. Nothing could prepare him, however, for the unexpected inheritance left him by his late father, which leads him back into an old school friendship with Viktor, a Russian diplomat living in London, and beyond that into the murky world of Soviet espionage at the height of the nuclear threat to the West.