Libya is preparing to ship arms to the Provisional IRA, and McCready sends Tom Rowse, a former SAS officer who is now a novelist, to Libya under the cover of researching a book. Rowse makes contact with the Libyan arms dealer and adds an order to the shipment. The SIS can then identify the cargo ship, and McCready enlists the help of the Special Boat Service to intercept it. Monica, a woman Rowse is strongly attracted to, proves to be mixed up with the gun-runners and is shot dead when the ship is boarded.

An American intelligence agent investigates the sudden disappearance of a colleague who was stationed in East Berlin. He finds a conspiracy to murder a Soviet politician.

A Soviet general offers the SIS important military documents, and a meeting is set up in East Germany, with McCready in charge of the operation.

Sunshine, an island in the British West Indies, is about to become independent, but shortly before the handover, in the middle of a bitterly fought presidential election campaign, the British governor is shot dead. Sam McCready of SIS sends in Desmond Hannah of Scotland Yard.

The French government expels dozens of Soviet diplomats, and Rodimstev, head of the KGB, forms an alliance with Carlos the Jackal to punish France. Sam McCready works to hinder them, going outside the law and the rules of his department. He has his own grudge match with Carlos, as his son Nick McCready was disabled in a terrorist attack.

While on a Soviet Military Intelligence visit to Britain, a Russian contacts the CIA station in London, wishing to defect to the US, claiming to be Colonel Pyotr Orlov of the KGB. Orlov's information leads to the arrest of several Soviet spies around the world and also gives insights into the Soviets' military planning. But McCready senses that something is wrong, and the head of the KGB's London office, who works for McCready under the name of Keepsake, claims that Orlov is not a defector at all, but a KGB plant.