Ted Mundy, a British man raised partly in Pakistan and Germany, meets the idealistic German radical Sasha during the student protests in Berlin in the late 1960s. Their friendship survives decades of changing allegiances, secret service work and disillusion. The novel follows them from the Cold War into the age of the war on terror, asking what loyalty means when governments and causes keep shifting. It is an angry, political book that mixes friendship, espionage and sharp criticism of Western policy.