Bonn: a small provincial town elevated by the Cold War to the artificial status of a capital city of British diplomats, their wives and aspiring German politicians. While the Foreign Office is locked in a last desperate battle to enter the Common Market, while the new Germany is being carried away on a rising tide of student-bourgeois nationalism, an aging Second Secretary vanishes from the British Embassy. Leo Harting: and he has taken with him, apparently official files which if disclosed could ruin Britain's chances at the negotiating table. Alan Turner, a tough investigator from London is sent to find him and pursue Harting's past: the institutions which employed or rejected him; the women and men who loved, trusted or despised him; and there's a refugee background to check out as well. It is vital that the Germans do not learn that Harting is missing nor that there's been a leak. With radical students and neo-Nazis rioting and critical negotiations under way in Brussels, the timing could not be worse and that's probably not an accident...