Tim Cranmer, retired secret servant, and Larry Pettifer, bored radical don, philanderer and for twenty years Tim's mercurial double agent against the now vanished Communist threat, have an unresolved rivalry that dates back decades. They follow each other into the lawless wilds of Moscow and then Southern Russia until a small, unheard-of nation becomes their proving ground in the finale to John le Carre's dazzling new novel.