Ernie Johnson, yshipowner and pacifist, is getting old. He has fought Fascism everywhere, starting in the Spanish Civil War. His nephew, the charter skipper Fred Hope, is called by his enemies an ecoterrorist, and by his friends a man with a lot of common sense. As Ernie approaches his eightieth birthday, he is arrested for gunrunning. Fred goes to his aid, and finds himself in the icy Norwegian Sea, heading for a tangle of Nazi loot, Russian mafiosi and renegade whalers. A tangle whose resolution involves nasty weather, nastier people, and a horrible legacy from the best-forgotten past....