1958. The British Empire did not fall — it transformed. Forty-three nations, forged in war and bound by an unlikely promise: that partnership could replace dominion. The Commonwealth Federation is eleven years old, still fragile, still proving itself. And in April, every leader in the Federation will gather in Delhi for the most symbolic summit in its short history. Someone intends to make it the last. Major Alexander Deveraux is a field operative who survives by instinct and operates in the spaces where rules don't apply. When a dying man in the Kenyan highlands delivers a single fragment of intelligence — a name, a city, a date — he is pulled into a conspiracy that reaches further than anyone in London wants to admit. The threat is unlike anything the Commonwealth's intelligence service has faced. And the man at the centre of it is someone Deveraux knows. Someone he trusted. Sent to Delhi with a small, unlikely team — including the one person who knows him well enough to see through every defence he has built — Deveraux must stop an attack designed not merely to kill, but to destroy the idea of the Commonwealth itself. Because the men behind it don't just want the summit to fail. They want to prove it was always going to. --- For readers of John le Carré, Len Deighton, and Alan Furst. Some empires fall. Some evolve. And some are worth fighting for. ---