On August 29th 1949, at seven a.m. local time, the Soviet Union successfully detonated its first atomic device and in so doing, drew itself level with the Americans and supercharged the Cold War. The tests were carried out at Semipalatinsk in what is now Kazakhstan. This is a fictional story based on that true event. As the mushroom clouds continued to block out the Kazakh sun, Yani Chernenko, witness and collaborator in those terrible events, ran. And now, forty years later, he is still hiding, buried in English hills, drowning in English rain and a lifetime of guilt. But as the Berlin Wall falls, those demons, the ones he helped to create, escape and track him down.