The year 1813. As the Grand Army of Napoleon faces defeat on the battlefields of Germany, Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater succeeds Lord Dungarth as head of the Royal Navy's Secret Department. Before long he is caught up in a vast intrigue which leads him into the most desperate mission of his career among the forbidding fjords of Norway. In a compelling narrative the author links the fate of one of Napoleon's most charismatic mashals with American privateers, escaped prisoners, the Danish navy and a violent confrontation set beneath the aurora.