This novel is set in the 1930s and features Charles Cooper, a well-educated, cultured Englishman who meanders through life. Upon receiving an inheritance, he quits his job and travels across the continent. He allows himself to be talked into an excursion to Moscow, where he ends up as a Soviet spy—more from pushy recruitment and passive compliance than any belief in the cause. He has no interest in the USSR and certainly no desire to be a spy. Upon his return to London, he is recruited by the Annexe, part of the security services, and becomes an unenthusiastic member of competing agencies working against each other. He is forced into the role as the British require him to participate in a murder in Brussels, while his Soviet self at home bludgeons a professor capable of identifying him as working for the Reds. A name change and his failure to report cause the Soviets to lose track of him. While Britain hunts for a mole—him—he quietly pursues his assignment, infiltrating the British Communist Party. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact throws Europe into turmoil, setting the stage for war and virtually destroying the BCP. In Moscow, the OMS that Cooper was part of is disbanded, and he eliminates his last handler in London. The Annexe, too, is shut down, and his boss hands him some money and tells him to disappear—an order he enthusiastically follows.
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