Germany, spring 1946. The Nuremberg Trials are underway. Three hundred miles north, in the Rehstadt Institute, an “Assessment and Evaluation” centre, Alex Foster interrogates a succession of lesser war criminals, deciding their futures in the soon-to-be-reborn Germany.

But Rehstadt, a town largely untouched by the war, is a place of old hostilities and burnished hatreds; a place where the certainties of the past are still weighed favourably against the uncertain promises of the future. It is in the confusing geography and history of this unsettled town that Alex Foster finds love: Eva Remer, a German interpreter, through whom he sees the true nature of the world beyond the privileged military enclave he and his companions inhabit.

As spring progresses, and events in the wider world quicken to their own closely-observed conclusion, Alex finds himself at the centre of a conflict involving British, American and German interests, and for the first time in his career, he also finds himself compromised — forced into subterfuge and deceit as he struggles to weigh personal convictions and loyalties against the greater political and military good.

Eventually, the rising conflicts of that incendiary environment pass beyond his control, drawing Alex, Eva and everyone close to them into a rushing tide of events, as inescapable and, ultimately, as destructive as anything Rehstadt suffered during the war itself.