The year is 1962 and in Moscow KGB officer Alexander Vasin feels as if he's chasing ghosts. Ordered to find an American spy rumoured to be embedded at the highest echelon of Soviet power, he's caught up in a dangerous game of espionage against not only the CIA but also state rival agencies. But it's while pursuing this infiltrator that Vasin learns of a top-secret operation that could push the world to the brink of war. The Kremlin has deployed short-range nuclear missiles on Cuba, barely ninety miles from the US coast, and, to support its high-risk gambit, dispatched four submarines to the Caribbean. Each is armed with a nuclear payload - and on board one of them there is an officer who is dangerously unfit for command. As tensions between the USSR and the USA escalate, the world holds its breath-and Vasin faces an extraordinary dilemma: how to warn his enemy without betraying his country. Weaving together historical fact with nail-bitingly tense fiction, the acclaimed author of Black Sun brings one of the most terrifying stand-offs in modern times to life in his stunning new Cold War thriller.