However, a new Director, Sir Henry Cuthbertson, who has a military background rather than in espionage, has reorganised the Department according to his own regimented and prejudicial ideas...which don't include a true professional like Charlie, whom he looks down upon and despises, and has appointed two of his favourites, Snare and Harrison, to major field positions, despite their obvious lack of experience.

In Moscow, General Valery Kalenin, chief planner of the KGB, is informed by his superiors of Berenkov's 40-year prison sentence.

Charlie visits Berenkov, with whom he has apparently become friendly, in prison for an interrogation which appears to Cuthbertson, his deputy Wilberforce, Snare and Harrison to be a complete failure.

However, Charlie proves that his interrogation "was one of the most productive [he] can remember having had with a captured spy," and has provided valuable information which Cuthbertson has been unable to realise.

Informed of this, both Garson Ruttgers, Director of the CIA, and Cuthbertson come to the same conclusion: Kalenin wants to defect, but to the British, not to the Americans.

Knowing that two opportunities to contact Kalenin are coming up, one at a Trade Fair in Leipzig and one at a party at the British Embassy in Moscow, Cuthbertson dispatches Harrison to Leipzig and Snare to Moscow to contact Kalenin and make arrangements for the hoped-for defection, while Ruttgers, arriving in London and kept on the outside by Cuthbertson, is determined that his agency will be involved.

Harrison makes a very clumsy contact with Kalenin in Leipzig, but is killed shortly afterwards trying to escape in a panic from Eastern German security forces.

At the British Embassy in Moscow, Snare meets briefly with Kalenin, who drops some pointed hints about how he can be contacted at a public park.

Charlie arrives in Vienna and is briefed on the plan (part of which, such as that the car he'll be driving will contain a radio-controlled bomb, he is not told).

To that end, he used himself as bait and the plan has worked perfectly: his men have captured the 200 British and American agents and now are in complete control of the house, and both Cuthbertson and Ruttgers will be going back with Kalenin to Moscow to be used as barter in exchange for Berenkov's release; the captured agents will be fingerprinted and photographed (making them useless for future Intelligence work) and then released.

In the novel's conclusion, Berenkov relaxes aboard a commercial flight to Moscow with a glass of champagne and toasts his absent friend.