The main character received an order from Dawlish, his boss, to come to Helsinki and prohibit the publication of an article by a Finnish journalist that could embarrass the British government. He finds a journalist murdered and accidentally meets a young woman who tries to recruit him into British intelligence. This woman, Signe Lane, is romantically involved with and works for the protagonist's old American friend Harvey Newbegin. Newbegin, in turn, tries to recruit him into a private intelligence network run by "The Brain", a billion-dollar supercomputer owned by the eccentric Texan billionaire General Midwinter.

Midwinter uses his agency and a private army to start an insurrection. in Latvia, trying to end communism in the Eastern Bloc and tip the balance of the Cold War in favor of the West. Having discovered this, as well as the fact that the package Newbegin wants to deliver from England to Finland contains virus-infected eggs stolen from a British research institute, the protagonist sets off from Finland through Riga, Leningrad, New York, Texas and back to London . He infiltrates the Midwinter organization to stop the virus from falling into Soviet hands and to protect Britain's reputation.