The Enemy is a first person narrative espionage thriller novel by English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 author Desmond Bagley

Desmond Bagley

Desmond Bagley , was a British journalist and novelist principally known for a series of best-selling thrillers...

, first published in 1977

1977 in literature

The year 1977 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Douglas Adams begins writing for BBC radio.*V. S. Naipaul declines the offer of a CBE....

.

Plot introduction

Malcolm Jaggard is, on the surface, a marketing research consultant. However, his real job is with an un-named government department in industrial espionage

Industrial espionage

Industrial espionage, economic espionage or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security purposes...

 counter-intelligence

Counter-intelligence

Counterintelligence or counter-intelligence refers to efforts made by intelligence organizations to prevent hostile or enemy intelligence organizations from successfully gathering and collecting intelligence against them. National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of...

. After he becomes engaged to genetics

Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....

 researcher Penelope Ashton, on a whim he runs a computer search on her father, the wealthy and respectable entrepreneur George Ashton. Much to his amazement, he finds that any and all information regarding George Ashton is classified at an astronomically high level, and that he is not regarded as having a “need to know”. Furthermore, the very act of researching information on George Ashton sends alarm bells ringing in multiple departments in the Whitehall

Whitehall

Whitehall is a road in Westminster, in London, England. It is the main artery running north from Parliament Square, towards Charing Cross at the southern end of Trafalgar Square...

 hierarchy. If this was not bad enough, a mysterious attacker throws acid in the face of his fiancée’s younger sister, causing the mysterious George Ashton to flee England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. Without being allowed to know more about Ashton, Jaggard is sent on a desperate search to find him, racing the KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

 to the forests of Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, and eventually to a remote island in the Scottish Highlands

Scottish Highlands

The Highlands is an historic region of Scotland. The area is sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Highlands". It was culturally distinguishable from the Lowlands from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands...

, where he finds that the true enemy is much closer to home.