The Dream: Perestroika succeeds, the world begins to disarm, a new era of peace and stability is ushered in. The Soviet President continues with his program of reform and liberalisation... The Nightmare: Patrick Hyde, of British Intelligence, on patrol with a mujahideen group inside Soviet Tadjikistan, witnesses the shooting down of a Soviet military airliner by the Red Army. When he recognises a senior CIA officer and, to his horror, the identity of one of the aircraft's passengers, he has only one priority, to reach London and Sir Kenneth Aubrey.