A secret agent comes of age - and reckons with the legacy of his first mission - in this thriller by New York Times best seller Charles Cumming, "the best of the new generation of British spy writers" (The Observer).

Lachlan Kite is a member of BOX 88, an elite transatlantic black-ops outfit so covert that not even MI6 and the CIA are certain of its existence - but even the best spy can't anticipate every potential threat in a world where dangerous actors lurk around every corner. At the funeral of his childhood best friend, Lachlan falls into a trap that drops him into the hands of a potentially deadly interrogation, with his pregnant wife, also abducted, being held as collateral for the information he's sworn on his own life to protect.

Thirty years earlier Lachlan, then just out of the upper-class boarding school where he was reared, was BOX 88's newest recruit. In the haze of a gap-year summer, in which the study of spycraft was intertwined with a journey of self-discovery, he cut his teeth on a special assignment on the coast of France, where a friendship allowed him special access to one of Iran's most dangerous men. Today, Lachlan's nostalgia for the trip is corrupted by recollection of the deceit that accompanied it, but in order to save his family, he'll be forced to revisit those painful memories one last time.