George Keene was blown to bits or drowned when HMS Spry exploded in the Bay of Biscay in March 1793. That, at least, is the story concocted by Sir Thomas Challoner, Pitt's spymaster general, so that he could give Keene a new identity and set him to work within the intelligence service that was seeking to undermine revolutionary France. But Keene's only desire is to rescue his beloved Therese from the Jacobin holocaust . . .