It's Quiller's most dangerous mission yet, and is also his last for the British intelligence agency so secret that it has no name. No matter that its orders originate at the Prime Minister level; if detected, it would be denied at that and every other level of the government. Quiller's orders this time take the pseudonymous operative to post–Cold War Russia to infiltrate the powerful and omnipresent mafiya that controls every sector and ruble of the country's fragile economy. More ruthless than the Sicilian brotherhood and as conscienceless as the Colombian drug cartels, the mafiya owns top politicians, judges, generals, bankers, and the police. Those it doesn't own it can buy, and those it doesn't choose to buy, it eliminates.

Chief among the lawless mafiya lords stands a criminally brilliant British national, whom the agency wants taken out of play. Quiller learns that the one man who can help him achieve his goal is impounded in Gulank, the most infamous of all the gulags. Quiller must sneak his way into Gulank, and from a gulag that no prisoner has ever escaped, rescue the only person who can save his last, internationally vital mission.