France has voted communist, Italy has voted communist. Russian tanks have come up to ten kilometers from the West German frontier. And a quiet young NATO employee in Brussels selects this moment to vanish. For years, he's been copying classified papers and now he wants an auction for them. The bidders: East and West. But the Dane, the distant manipulator, isn't exactly bidding. He sets a German to find him - a German to find a German - and an Englishman to make sure he doesn't kill him...