Landing in present-day England, all appears serene as the Doctor and Sam emerge from the TARDIS into the idyllic grounds of the Silver family's ancestral home. Only when they enter the house do they suspect things are not what they seem.

How far-reaching is the strange power of a secret society almost 700 years old, and how is it linked to the mysterious Station Nine? And what is the significance of a series of paintings that drove a man to suicide?

From thirteenth-century England to the former Soviet Union, from the United States to the cold wastes of space, the various strands of a complex plan come together and threaten to engulf the world in a nightmare of nuclear destruction...