Stephen Ezard is a reclusive, brilliant mathematician who returns home to England to attend his brother Michael's funeral. Michael was an aid worker killed by a landmine in Afghanistan. After years of working in near-isolation in China, Stephen struggles to reconcile his carefully controlled world with a brother he did not know, in a police-state London he does not recognize. He finds himself falling in love with his brother's widow and becoming the public face on a government super-database and find himself part of a program that has the ability to watch and record the actions and movements of every individual.