Belgrade, summer 1914. Theo Harris, first secretary, is in charge of the British Legation where an alleged accomplice of the Sarajevo assassins of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand takes refuge. The arrest and extradition of this boy, brother of Harris's Serbian mistress, is among the demands in the Austrian ultimatum leading to the outbreak of the World War. But Harris doubts that to commit one possibly innocent victim to the mercy of Austrian interrogators could save any of the thousands who may come to die on battlefields. His doubts grow as war becomes more certain. Personal ethic and the claims of love fatally conflict with professional duty and self-interest. David Crackanthorpe was born in Cumbria, educated at Oxford, and is the author of five novels and a biography, Hubert Crackanthorpe & English Realism in the 1890s. He is married to a granddaughter of the writer John Buchan and lives in southern France.