James Collard and his son Nick are flying from Frankfurt to New York for Christmas in 1988. Collard (in part because of a last-minute work meeting, in part because a strange old man told him not to get on the plane) gets off in London. Later that night he learns that the plane has exploded over Lockerbie. Initially concerned to discover whether his son made the flight, Collard gets dragged into the mystery of who put the bomb on the plane, and whether a legendary old spook called James Jesus Angleton - who died three years before - was somehow involved....