Assigned to Cairo on the eve of the Second World War, British intelligence officer Danielle Dawson has recruited a German double agent with a deadly secret. A Nazi archaeologist is searching for an ancient treasure map etched on a copper tablet. Legend says it names the hiding places of the treasures of the Temple of Solomon. After the double agent is murdered, Danielle follows the archaeologist to Damascus and across the desert to Babylon, a step behind him the whole way.

With her partner Elliott Owen, Danielle works the clues into British-ruled Palestine, where the hiding places have waited since the Temple fell. One of them is under Jerusalem, and opening it puts their names in a police file. By then the archaeologist’s purpose is plain. He isn’t chasing gold or silver—he’s chasing something the Reich can use.

The Reich wants the copper text for what it can be made to prove. Danielle wants it for what it reveals. Dawson is not the name her family carried out of Germany, and the past the Reich intends to write has no room in it for hers. Between her and the truth stand an assassin sent to silence her, a traitor inside her own service, and a tunnel beneath a ruined fortress in the Judean wilderness that the desert can drown in minutes.