For a retired Professor the accidental discovery that a flying machine graced the skies of a Buckinghamshire village nine years before the Wright brothers flew at Kittyhawk was meant to be the sole subject of a controversial book call 'The Flying Machine'. Instead, his research took the lid off the existence of a super-secret organisation that had been dealing in murder and blackmail in the name of British national security for one hundred and fifty years, and without anyone in government or the intelligence services knowing of its existence.
Secretly brought into existence by The Naval Defence Act of 1889 and brought into law in 1890, The Sails and Rigging Committee had become the most secret organisation in the world. Its job was to protect the supremacy of the United Kingdom's navy by any and every means possible. Murder, extortion, blackmail, torture, all conducted without any legal oversight. Now, a retired History Professor has blown their cover and is determined to go public. The problem is can he stay alive long enough to see the end of the SRC? And who can he trust? The reality of a world where the Sails and Rigging Committee can and does exist is that he can trust nobody. Perhaps not even himself.