The book is about the naval arms race between Great Britain and Germany in 1906 to 1914. Both wanted to build more Dreadnoughts than the other. Germany needed to know how many Great Britain planned to build, and they found a close friend of Queen Alexandra Rupert Von Wester-Wald, who attended many Royal Functions so he could overhear snippets of information. Naismith knew Von Wester-Wald was the eyes and ears of the Kaiser, and was planning to send bogus information to Germany to make Germany ease up in the arms race . Could he fool Von Wester-Wald into believing it was genuine? Rupert wanted to beat Naismith at his own game and was relishing the chase.