In 1980, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had taken over the leadership of the West and the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan - the most crucial battle of the Cold War was about to begin. In the high mountain passes of the north-west Frontier and the Hindu Kush, the CIA and MI6 saw an opportunity to bring the mighty Soviet army to its knees. Their weapon: the Islamic guerrillas of the Afghan Mujahideen. The first Western agent to link up with the Mujahideen was Tom Carew, a young ex-SAS soldier with a talent for "black bag" covert operations and veteran of the wars in Dhofar and Northern Ireland. In the course of an extraordinary year, Carew led a series of reconnaissance missions inside Afghanistan; he took part in an astonishing attempt to hijack a shipment of anti-aircraft missiles from Communist Bulgaria for use by the guerrillas and set up the first western-sponsored training camp for Mujahideen in Pakistan. In the course of these operations Carew was accepted and befriended by the fundamentalist Mujahideen and became as close to them as any European individual could ever get. In many ways he was a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia.