By the world at large Neil Mallory, once a paratroop colonel, was thoroughly discredited - but to Anne Grant, alone on the Southampton waterfront, he appeared from the fog like some dark hero. Sinister forces were at work, and when the submarine L'Alouette, defecting to the O.A.S., slid into the depths of Biscay, leaving only death behind, she caused the biggest security clamp-down since the war.Anne Grant hired Mallory to run her motor-cruiser across to the Channel Islands and found herself involved with him in a life-or-death struggle with a fanatical Frenchman dedicated to destroying Charles de Gaulle.