Lord Alexander Hawke's hunt for the Warmonger-a shadowy figure orchestrating chaos across the globe-is put on hold so that he may undertake an urgent mission for the Crown. His assignment: Travel to Russia, escorting the lovely Dr. Ariadne Silk; confront his archnemesis, Vladimir Putin; and recover a secret document that threatens to shake the British monarchy to its core. While Hawke makes a perilous journey across Europe, his good friend Ambrose Congreve's routine investigation of a bizarre murder takes a deadly turn, pulling him into a cat-and-mouse game with Silence, a cold-blooded assassin who may be targeting Hawke himself. Hawke will soon discover that he is a pawn in the Warmonger's Byzantine plot to bring the world to the brink of total war and resurrect a fallen empire.