Ted Mundy, former student radical and Cold War spy for the British, is living a quiet life as co-principal of an English-language school and tour guide in Germany when he is contacted by an old friend and colleague who tries to persuade Ted to accept a too-good-to-be-true offer from a mysterious philanthropist who is putting up $500,000 to turn the school into a vehicle for promoting international peace and understanding in the post-9/11 world.

It is 1943, and thirteen-year-old Michael O'Shaunessey, son of the Irish ambassador to Nazi Germany in Berlin, is also a spy for the British Secret Service, so he has joined the Hitler Youth, and pretending that he agrees with their violence and book-burning is hard enough-- but when he is asked to find out more about "Projekt 1065" both his and his parents' lives get a lot more dangerous.

Comatose after an act of heroism, Henri Skinner revisits memories of his British youth, while a woman from his past forges an unexpected, profound friendship with Henri's teenage son, Sam.