A crafty agent outwitted by the Avengers supposedly commits suicide rather than go home in disgrace.
A brilliant plastic surgeon and a criminal plot to duplicate and replace high government officials.
Capsules of an anti-terrorist gas that causes a dead sleep for six hours are stolen.
Mark Crayford has walked in John Steed's shadow since they were children. Steed believed their rivalry good natured until the day he and Crayford went to insert Crayford into a foreign country. Then Crayford revealed his bitterness and tried to murder Steed, and Steed shot him. Border guards waiting for the defector dragged him across the fence. Ten years later, a doctor advises Crayford that the long ago bullet will soon kill him, and cannot be removed. Crayford has done good work, and so his masters allow him a final trip home, where he intends to deal with Steed for the last time.
An agent bursts through enemy lines. He has vital information; but is shot before he can reveal what it is. All he tells Steed is that enemies have devised a foolproof way of eliminating key men in government. Then one of Steed's superiors collapses of a heart attack. Digging, he learns that forty seven other key men have died of natural causes over the last two years - too many for coincidence. Purdey tries to link these men, while Gambit realizes such an operation would have to be run by the very best sort of mole - the one who's completely above suspicion. And then Gambit's best candidate dies... of natural causes.
Freddy Mason pays informers - lowlife individuals who trade tidbits of information for money. When one of them accidentally cuts himself and the next has the same cut, Freddie smells a rat and tails the woman. And then he discovers she's not a woman at all! His boss Graham Wallace has disguised himself as various informers to bilk his own agency out of money. Too bad Freddie goes over a bridge before he can tell anyone. But Freddie was good friends with John Steed, and Wallace knows Steed is relentless, so he cooks up a plan to make it look like Steed is a thief and a murderer. Steed has to fend off stolid McBain, the agency investigator, while he figures out how Mason died. Fortunately, a medium just might have some answers.
The Unicorn is one of the deadliest killers working. He and Steed have matched wits for years. Finally, Steed believes he knows where the unicorn will strike, and with this knowledge, captures the villain. But the Unicorn is head of a large organization determined to free him. It sends a man to kill Steed, but the man shoots a reflection of Steed in a mirror - and the bullet passes through the glass and kills the Unicorn who was standing on the other side! The Unicorn's men will never believe they killed their own leader; they'll assume Steed did it and retaliate violently. And then they kidnap a French prince and offer him in trade for their leader. Steed's challenge: figure out how to trade a dead killer for a live prince!
Purdey once knew a man named Larry so well they were considering marriage. And then Larry got a telegraph from the government; his father was dead, shot in the Middle East on suspicion of espionage. Larry notices a certain Middle Eastern potentate whom he holds responsible for this crime. He goes to where the man will embark his plane for home with murder in his heart, but Purdey ruins his chance. She thinks she saved him from a mistake but he backhands her and storms off. Seven years later, a mysterious fire strikes near a military base. It is the first link in a chain of events orchestrated to end that same foreigner’s life – and maybe the lives of everyone in Parliament, unless Purdey can work past her problems and help Steed and Gambit stop it.
An agent, Willie, discovers a drug drop. The drug trafficker’s guards shoot him, but he lives long enough to convey the information to Purdey and Gambit. Together with Steed and a CIA man, they stake out the drug drop. The pickup man nearly escapes, but in the attempt falls to his death and the team recovers his merchandise. Soo Choy has lost ten million dollars worth of drugs, but far worse in his view – he has lost face among his peers, who call him names and denigrate his skills. Determined to regain face, he sets men to finding out everything about the three survivors of the raid – Steed, Purdey and Gambit. And when he has, he puts a plan in motion to lure the agents to him where their heads will go on the block – literally – to prove Soo Choy’s value!
Purdey dashes to spend a few days with her mother. But men wait at her apartment. She defeats two before a third knocks her cold with chloroform. These men want to trade for Purdey’s life; they make Steed jump through hoops – and they warn him to tell no one. First he must bring five thousand pounds to a particular house, but that was just a test run. What they really want is the Allied Attack Plans. And they’ll kill Purdey if Steed doesn’t break into the safe in his bosses’ office and photograph the plans. Through various means they make it clear they’d watching Steed and can come and go in his home as they please. Steed has no choice – he steals the plans and follows instructions. But the ringleader is someone surprising, and the real objective isn’t the plans at all...
The Red Army sends a probing expedition into 1945 Tibet, led by a young 1st Lieutenant. He chances upon an monastery and the monk who lives and works there – a holy man and a medical man. The laboratory contains many cages, each labeled with year, and each containing a rabbit. In 1965, Steed responds when a single Russian soldier attacks a small English village. That soldier was over sixty. In 1977 dozens of Russian soldiers begin attacking French targets. As they attack, they’re young men, but when they die, they’re old men. Steed and his team realize all of their targets make sense – to soldiers from thirty years ago. With help from the French army they end the threat. And then a contact calls Steed from the Russian embassy – it’s worse than he fears; the threat has just begun...
Steed and his associates believe they’ve put a stop to the mysterious Russian assault unit, but in fact they have not. There are two more elements out there – highly trained killers. It seems the main unit was never more than a distraction, intended to occupy attention while the two K agents awaken later to do their jobs of assassination. One dies assassinating his target, an old and respected French general. But the assassin carried a modern photograph of the man! That implies help from a modern source – and that source is the sinister Colonel Stanislav, whose father, now much younger than he, is the second killer! Stanislav wishes to begin World War III with Russia as the aggressor, and with his father’s help, he may succeed – unless Steed, Gambit and Purdey can stop him.
A man perches atop a building in Canada, where he points a rifle at a courtyard below. Spotting a target, he squeezes the trigger... and a picture emerges from the sight! He embarks for London with this evidence. Elsewhere, men talk beneath pictures of Marx and Lenin. They celebrate their greatest agent, X-41, code named Scapina. An undisputed master, Scapina never fails. He is ruthless and emotionless – and John Steed wants him very badly. Steed plans to meet the courier and accept from him evidence of Scapina’s identity – but the man dies before he can speak. He hands Steed the picture as he dies. Steed’s sole remaining contact in Canada will not come to England, so the New Avengers must journey to Canada, where they discover Scapina is always one step ahead of them...
Karl Sminski started with a hundred and forty men. Only four remain. Four exemplars of strength, cunning and skill for a mission that requires only two. His four finalists will fight to the death of two of them; the survivors will accompany him to Canada. Steed visits Toronto, ostensibly on vacation. But it is a working vacation – he’s looking for Karl Sminski, a Red Army colonel and KGB agent who looks like a heavyweight and moves like a cat. Steed wants to know where Sminski went when he disappeared two years ago on a special training mission – and he knows Sminski has reappeared in Canada, as a cultural attaché. If Sminski succeeds in his mission, he may set Canadian intelligence back twenty years and at the same time create an army of powerful terrorists!
Purdey manages to escape from Puck’s Circus, barely ahead of pursuers. They work for The Fox. Purdey went undercover to learn the identity of The Fox, and somehow her cover was broken. She knows the date of a payoff and the name of the courier, but not the place. The team follows the courier, observes the payoff, and chases The Fox through Toronto. The Fox finally escapes, but in the process leaves a handprint on the top of an old Plymouth whose owner has named it Emily. Now all the team has to do is get that car back to Toronto and the forensics unit there – a challenge considering that both the Fox and the police end up in pursuit. With help from Purdey, Steed’s bowler and a hammer and chisel they might just succeed.
In April of 1969, word comes to Vladivostock of a terrible storm – hurricane Agatha – that is precisely what’s needed for a special project... Two days later, a fisherman on Lake Ontario suddenly finds himself on dry land. Steed, Gambit and Purdey enlist Bailey to intercept a courier who buries his package. When dug up, they discover it is a Mark 6 guidance system – absolutely cutting edge of the Russian missile program. So what is it doing in a desolate part of Canada? They return it and observe the spot, and the pickup man retrieves it and... throws it into the lake! Steed and his team must discover how all this ties to “Forward Base” and what kind of threat Forward Base poses to Canadian security.