When the Atlantic Express pulls out of Milan Central, it has aboard the highest-ranking defector ever to come out of the Soviet Union – a man of vital importance to both East and West, a member of the Politburo itself. 

          Under a protection of a hand-picked team of British and American agents, headed by the veteran Harry Wargrave and the beautiful Elsa Lang, he is pursued across half a continent by the massed network of the KGB. 

          As a blizzard roars across Europe, the Atlantic Express becomes the target of men commanded by the highest Russian authority to stop at nothing in their mission of extermination….