Mission Impossible – the Central Asian city of Khiva, closed to Europeans by the Russians and a possible springboard for an invasion of India. The man to undertake it – Captain Fred Burnaby, six foot four in his socks, a brilliant horseman, a crack shot and strong as an ox, with eight languages under his belt. In the winter of 1875, braving frostbite and snowdrifts and unbeknown to his army superiors who would have forbidden it, he set out across Central Asia to investigate the latest secret Russian moves in the Great Game.