R.G. Cole is strangled after going to watch an illegal bare knuckle boxing match. He was also due to stage a Wagner festival sponsored by South African club owner Hansie Kriel, whose daughter Sarah was literally being fought over by two of the young boxers. One of them, student Milo Hardy, is also murdered following a trip to Berlin, where Hansie plans to open a new club and from where Cole's protege Richard Helm and his mother Valli escaped during the Cold War. Robbie believes that the victims were about to identify the Stasi informant responsible for Valli's liberal husband's death over twenty years before and sends Sergeant Hathaway to Germany to prove this.