Winter 1963: two children have disappeared in Manchester; the murderous careers of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady have begun. On a freezing day in December, another child goes missing: 13-year-old Alison Carter vanishes from the isolated Derbyshire hamlet of Scardale. For the young George Bennett it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case:
Officially the Cold War is over. In private, though, the intelligence war goes on. A high-ranking Russian naval officer, Viktor Archenko, has been passing valuable information to MI6, but when suspicion falls on him, the time has come to get him out and more rides on this than one man's life.
Fired from a top-secret Soviet nuclear base in the chaotic last days of the communist regime, a KGB security man steals a suitcase bomb, smuggles it out and buries it in his backyard. Sixteen years later he's going to put it on the market. It's as lethal as on the day it was manufactured - capable of effectively wiping out a major city.
A young man starts a journey from a dusty village in Saudi Arabia. He believes it will end with his death in faraway England. For honour, for glory, for victory. If his mission succeeds, he will go to his god a martyr — and many innocents will die with him. For David Banks, an armed protection officer charged with neutralising the growing menace to London's safety, his role is not as clear-cut as it once was.
In extreme heat and exposed to cruelly vicious storms, it is a place where only the strongest and most determined men will survive. Deep in the sands, lost from sight, are the leadership of Al Qaeda, hunted, pursued and regrouping to strike again. Among the bedouin and Arabs of the caravan one man stands out. His strength, self-imposed discipline and leadership mark him. He is an Outsider.
