September 1945. Bankrupt and desperate, Britain sends John Maynard Keynes to boom town Washington to beg for a loan. Under cover of the backup team, agent Peter Cotton is sent to investigate the break-up of America's wartime intelligence agency. Cotton finds himself caught up in a world of shadows involving an extraordinarily attractive girl from the US State Department, a Soviet ex-tank commander claiming to be his opposite number, a contrarian African academic, an ambitious, quick-tempered boss from the world of misinformation... and an Anglo-American conspiracy that will change the world of post-war intelligence for ever.