Agent or traitor? Killer or victim? Kurte Menke is a refugee from the East ... or is he?

Once they had been friends - long ago in Berlin before the wall was built. Now, for fifteen years, their friendship has totalled a card at Christmas. But, a late-night phone call brings Charles Ashmore, a respectable London solicitor, and Kurte Menke, an East German defector, together again.

Is it just chance that Kurt's reappearance coincides with the trial of an English spy - a trial that Charles is defending? And who sends the mysterious attackers to Charles's cottage? Is it the Germans, the British, or somebody else?