Sam McCready serves Britain as Chief of Covert Operations for the Secret Intelligence Service. He’s competent, dedicated, in his prime. Why then this push to get him out?

The options are painful — early retirement or an administrative backwater. But he has one other option: it’s a wild card, confrontational, risky.

Risky because McCready knows too much. He senses the move is more about destabilizing SIS than settling a score with him. Who wants him out, and why? And what happens if he refuses to go quietly?