In 1902, British aristocrat Orlando, Duke of Oxford, his wife Emily, and their young son Conrad visit a concentration camp in South Africa during the Boer War while working for the Red Cross. Emily is killed during a Boer sniper attack on the camp, causing pacifistic Orlando to determine that the world needs someone to head off such conflicts before they occur.
Twelve years later, Orlando has recruited two of his servants, Shola and Polly, into his spy network dedicated to protecting the United Kingdom and the British Empire from the approaching Great War. Conrad, eager to fight, is forbidden to join up by the protective Orlando, who persuades Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, not to let him join the army.
At the behest of Kitchener, Conrad and Orlando ride with Orlando’s friend Archduke Franz Ferdinand through Sarajevo, and Conrad saves the Archduke from a bomb thrown by Gavrilo Princip, a rebel intent on sparking a war. Later, however, Princip happens to run into the Archduke’s entourage again, this time succeeding in fatally shooting Ferdinand and his wife Sophia. Orlando’s group, relying on information from other dignitaries’ socially invisible servants, learn that Princip was part of a plot to pit the German, Russian, and British empires against each other. The group, headed by the mysterious Shepherd from a secret mountain-top headquarters, have their own network of agents, including the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin, a trusted adviser to Tsar Nicholas of Russia.
Rasputin, on the orders of the Shepherd, manipulates Tsar Nicholas by poisoning his young son, and only curing him when Nicholas promises to leave the war. Conrad is notified of Rasputin’s manipulation by his cousin Felix Yusupov. Knowing the Western Front will be left vulnerable if Russia leaves the war, Conrad delivers this information to Kitchener and his aide-de-camp Major Morton, who set sail for Russia. Their ship is torpedoed by a submarine and sunk. Word of Kitchener’s death reaches Orlando, spurring him to head to Russia with Shola, Polly, and Conrad to deal with Rasputin once and for all. At a Christmas party hosted by Prince Yusupov, Orlando, Shola, Conrad, and Rasputin fight, the skirmish only ending when Polly shoots and kills Rasputin.
