It is the winter of 1946, and after years of war, ex-Special Operations Executive agent Duncan Forrester is back at his Oxford college as a junior Ancient History Fellow. But his peace is shattered when a much-disliked Fellow is found dead in the quad, stabbed and pushed from an upper window. A don is suspected and arrested for the murder, but Forrester is not convinced of his friend’s guilt. On the hunt for the true killer, he finds himself plunged into a mystery involving lost Viking sagas, Satanic rituals and wartime espionage.

Duncan Forrester has travelled to Greece, intent on recovering the ancient Cretan stone he discovered during the war, while part of an SOE mission to kidnap a German commander. But during a visit to Athens he witnesses the poisoning of a Greek poet, who it appears may have not been the intended target. The man Forrester believes to have been marked for death is a general, who has been approached to lead ELAS, the military arm of the Greek communists. With Greece on the brink of civil war, and more attempts made on the general's life - not to mention an enemy from his own past on his heels - Forrester knows that the country's future depends on the fate of one man...

It's 1947. As Britain's new Labour government struggles to cope with the break-up of Empire, there's a grisly murder in the British Museum, terrorists target British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and Forrester boards the Queen Mary for a fateful voyage to New York.