July 1805: Napoleon's army masses across the Channel - Britain is within hours of invasion and defeat. Only one thing stands in the way - an obscure govenement bureau of murky origins and shadowy purpose: The Comptrollerate General for Scrutiny and Survey. Behind the clash of fleets and armies, there lies a secret world of intrigue, deception, treachery and violence. Which is precisely why the Comptrollerate exists... Into this feverish environment comes a dead man. Pulled half-drowned from a shipwreck, his past erased, Tom Roscarrock is put to work for the Comptrollerate and thrown headfirst into a bewildering world of political intrigue and violence. In France, a plan is underway to shatter the last of England's stability. In England, the man who recruited Roscarrock has disappeared, his agents keep turning up dead, and reports of a secret French fleet are panicking the authorities. His life in danger and his motives increasingly suspect, Roscarrock must pursue the complex conspiracy across England and then into the heart of Napoleon's France, there to confront the greatest mystery of all...