A man lies dying in a hospital in upstate Vermont. The nurses know only that he is an academic at a nearby university, but they have been instructed to call the FBI should anyone visit their patient. News of this suspected Russian illegal soon reaches MI5, where Liz Carlyle has been contacted by Mischa, a top-secret source who is requesting a clandestine rendezvous in Berlin. Meanwhile in Brussels a Russian agent who has lived undercover for years is beginning to question his role, while suspicions have been roused about a Suffolk boarding school that has recently changed hands in mysterious circumstances.