TURKEY, 1941. Secretly backed by Berlin, a cadre of Turkish officers has planned a military coup to topple the neutralist government and enter the war on the side of the Axis.
Documents linking the insurgents to German Intelligence fall into the hands of an elusive Turkish criminal who plans to sell them back to the highest bidder. In both British and German intelligence circles, a frantic effort is mounted to recover the “Cinder Red” papers.
The hunt pits two men against each other, Wolf Koeller, a resourceful Abwehr operative, and Wilson Chance, an American. Street smart and wry, Chance has a cynical allegiance to nothing. When the British blackmail him into working for them, he finds himself swept into the heart of the Cinder Red conspiracy, and a relationship with two women, one of whom is a double agent. From the cabarets and teeming brothel quarter of Adana, to the ruins of a crusader castle above the Mediterranean, Chance follows a trail of murder and intrigue to its ultimate conclusion.