One Man's Flag

Spring 1915. As Europe erupts into war, Jack McColl, a spy for His Majesty’s Secret Service, is stationed in India, charged with defending the Empire against Bengali terrorists and their German allies. Belgium, he finds, is not the only country seeking to expel an invader.

In England, meanwhile, suffragette journalist Caitlin Hanley begins the business of rebuilding her life after the execution of her brother—an IRA sympathizer whose terrorist plot was foiled by Caitlin’s own ex-lover, the very same Jack McColl. The war is changing everything and giving fresh impulse to those causes—feminism, socialism and Irish independence—which she as a journalist has long supported.

The threat of a Rising in Dublin alarms McColl’s bosses as much as it dazzles Caitlin. It was one Irish plot that came between Jack and Caitlin in 1914, and it will take another to bring them back together as both enemies and lovers.

David Downing grew up in suburban London. He is the author of Jack of Spies, as well as six books in the John Russell espionage series, set in WWII Berlin:Zoo Station, Silesian Station, Stettin Station, Potsdam Station,Lehrter Station, and Masaryk Station. He lives with his wife, an American acupuncturist, in Guildford, England.