It is a vast and brilliant conspiracy. International monetary links crossed ideological boundaries between East and West long ago. Now, the Soviet Union has a finely tuned plan to default on more than $600 billion owed by itself and its satellites to a consortium of western banks. The unthinkable is close at hand: total collapse of the economic on which our civilisation is based.

From Washington to London to New York, in every money centre in the world, the bankers are slowly becoming aware of the fact that something is very wrong. Thomas Pike, Jr. is first to put the pieces together, to see the pattern in the loans Moscow is making to the satellite and unaligned nations, and the money the Soviet Union is borrowing from the West.