While riding home to lunch on his donkey, Fairclough of Customs is rudely unseated by shots fired from behind. The incident is but the first of a series of attacks seemingly aimed at public officials. Even Captain Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt, British head of Cairo's Secret Police, barely escapes. Is a sinister campaign to undermine foreign rule under way? And who are the men behind ? True, the Nationalist movement is rising after thirty years of the British Protectorate, and the new Liberal Government in London is more sympathetic than the heavy-handed Conservatives to local rule. But can Owen discount more mundane agendas?
Under orders to act quickly, Owen delves into both maneuverings at the Khedive's court and the goals of a commercial delegation. His investigations not only carry him in to the city's student quarter but out into the countryside and onto a rural estate. Along the way he juggles a Pasha whose political star is fading, a bomb-wielding Berber, and the knife-happy gypsy Soraya who seriously annoys Owen's main squeeze, the fiery and lovely Zeinab, herself the daughter of a pasha. Which of these explosive mixes is most likely to prove injurious to the Mamur Zapt as well as to the government he serves?
