On a secret mission to the Finnish-Soviet border at the height of the Cold War, two Norwegian volunteers are shot dead. Their bodies are found in the snow, inexplicably on the wrong side of the border, in an incident with far-reaching international repercussions. For the adventurer and mountaineer Halvard Starheim the death of his friends is both a personal and a professional tragedy. As he searches for answers he finds himself drawn back into the past, to the brutal years of Nazi occupation, and into the present-day activities of a growing Lapp Rights movement. Swept from the treacherous intrigues of Oslo to the frozen wastes of Arctic Lapland, he discovers at last that it is someone close to him who holds the key...