It's the time of Freddy and the Dreamers and Christine Keeler. A young woman has been found murdered in a Wiltshire wood. At the local prep school, the head-teacher strives to keep the vulgar world outside his gates, but special boy Buck has found a clue. And soon the woods on the estate are being trampled not only by the local police, but by agents of a foreign power. For one of the teachers, a mysterious book awakens long suppressed memories. Could it be that a nation's hero has uncloaked himself in a cynical litany of evil? Teacher and pupil are both in danger as the cold war waters lap at the very walls of Cottston School. A tour de force - it's as if John Buchan and William Golding had shared a typewriter.