Philby wants to come back — why? After years behind the Iron Curtain Philby wants to return to his homeland. John Powell, the youngest member of the Milord Committee that monitors Philby's every move, is assigned the task of finding out why. Is it an old man's whim, or a carefully planned KGB operation? To find out Powell must journey into the labyrinth of a man's legendary past, sifting through every rumour, every plot, every shadowy alliance, until the journey leads him into the darkest and most dangerious recesses of them all, the heart and mind and motivation of the man himself — Kim Philby.