Newspaper magnate Sir George Fison, with allies within British political and Civil Service circles, moves immediately to discredit him, with the United States the key, but covert, conspirator.
Marcus Morgan, the US Secretary of State, visits London to try to persuade Perkins of his country's need of a nuclear deterrent, suggesting that American financial assistance in repairing the British economy is conditional upon the abandonment of his defence policies.
While the IMF offer is being debated in Cabinet, Perkins receives a call from his Foreign Secretary Tom Newsome, who has been having meetings in Sweden, and is able to announce that the International State Bank of Moscow has agreed to lend the money without preconditions.
[3] In retaliation, Newsome's affair with Maureen Jackson, a member of the Hampstead Labour Party, is reported by Fison's newspapers, alleging that she posed a security risk owing to spurious IRA connections.
Thompson, with the aid of his aristocratic girlfriend Elizabeth Fain, outlines the members of the conspiracy, including the moderate, politically ambitious Chancellor of the Exchequer Lawrence Wainwright, who lost the last Labour leadership election to Perkins two years before.
The Perkins Government's policies for nuclear disarmament and neutrality, despite the live national broadcast of the disarming of a nuclear warhead, are hampered by the Chiefs of Staff fudging the figures regarding British, NATO and Warsaw Pact military capabilities, representatives of the United States government and armed forces claiming that the removal of US military bases can only be achieved after five years (after the latest possible date for the next general election), and the covert assassination of Sir Montague staged as a road accident.
Browne presents Perkins with forged evidence of financial irregularity suggesting that he had accepted £300,000 from the Soviet government as part of loan negotiations with the International State Bank of Moscow.