When Marcus Winslow appears at Private Investigator Makana\'s door one April morning, Makana does not realize that soon he will risk losing everything he has built for himself in Cairo. A representative of the British government, Winslow has come with a mission, one impossible to turn down: Ayman Nizari, an Iraqi scientist specialising in biochemical nerve agents, a man whose work could kill thousands, is on the run and asking for asylum. He trusts only one man to bring him to safety: Makana.The scientist has gone to ground in Istanbul, and Makana quickly discovers that in this place nothing is as it appears, in a case that will see his past and present collide with fatal consequences.