The Empire is rotting. Imperial Britain stands alone as the global industrial power, but twenty years after the Great War, and in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution, itis fraying at the edges. From Hong Kong to Palestine, the colonies are in revolt. Nowhere do the fires of independence burn brighter than in Egypt, which is exactly where Dr. Rebecca Allenby Clarke, star chemist of the Imperial Coal and Petroleum Company, finds herself. Deployed with members of His Majesty's Military Intelligence Section - a.k.a. 'the Section' - she is tasked to find the saboteurs working to destroy the Port Said coaling station. A field agent hardened by years of service in the Indian Emergency and an academic poseur make up this crack team of Section agents, sent by London, to lead the investigation.
Alongside her Section team, Rebecca must navigate Egypt's dark underbelly to uncover the plot. Working within a corrupt system, she struggles to stem the rot and save the Empire while increasingly asking herself:
do I really want to?
Deighton meets dieselpunk in this alternate history thriller.