Something damned strange was happening to the weather. Not just freakish blizzards in the Sahara, but unseasonable monsoons and typhoons in the East, savage hurricanes and tornadoes in the U.S., and in Europe, disastrous floods and snow, snow, snow.

Meteorologists were predicting a new Ice Age. But the CIA was not convinced. Nor was the KGB. To them it looked as if the old quip about the weather had been insanely twisted: Nobody was talking, but somebody was certainly doing a hell of a lot about the weather. The problem was so serious that the masters of deceit laid aside their masks and plots to meet in Belgium and select an elite team to locate the source of the weather disturbance an eliminate it.

Durell heads the team and his search leads them far up in the Baltic through hurricane winds and snow to the northernmost reaches of Sweden. In this storm-racked and foreboding setting, Sam hopes to find the eccentric scientist who holds the key to an assignment so strange it is totally believable.