As a very young naval officer at the end of World War II, Alan Ross had the job, with a handful of even younger marines, of delivering a surrendered German U-boat into Russian hands in Tallinn. The German crew were inevitably reluctant to submit to this order, but Ross prevailed and he saved their lives. Almost half a century later, he goes back to Tallinn to complete a strange friendship that had in the interim developed with the U-boat commander.