"Your wife's been captured - and, I'm afraid, tortured." The senior officer across the desk looked up: "She was heard to scream. We don't know for how long." The officer stood up: "I'm very sorry," he said and shook Harry's hand...Harry Cardwell's wife Annie is in the hands of the OVRA, Italian secret police; his youngest son waits alone and vulnerable in Basel, his oldest son is trying to track down Harold Macmillan somewhere in North Africa: one family, like so many in war, scattered across the world and variously in peril...Between them they live the invasion of Sicily and Italy: with the 8th and 5th Armies and the foot-soldiers' slog; with the PoWs and the partisan war; with the desperate heroism everywhere, military and civilian; with the tragic consequences of mistake or betrayal. And all of them all the time inside that endless roulette-wheel of injury, death or survival, most especially at the very end when victory and peace seem within grasp. Part 5 of 6 in the Harry and Annie series