When a set of dog tags, supposedly belonging to a seaman missing since the early 1950s, is washed up on a beach in modern day Co. Antrim, Jack Valentine,

'deadbeat ex-spook'

', finds himself being pulled back

towards his previous life once more. But what can the disturbance of an old North Sea arms dump, dating back to the end of the Second World War, have to do with a botched US mission to Iraq in the early 1990s? And why are faces Jack knows all too well suddenly appearing in the wintry landscape of Northern Ireland?