Sent undercover by Britain’s famed yet clandestine Temporal Agency to Istanbul, Detective Sir Seaton Begg and Doctor Sinclair are on the hunt for the Red King, the leader of a secretive group of assassins who are plotting to change the shape of the world. At the same time, the nascent Nazi forces are also in Istanbul, for their own reasons. Begg and Philips are thrust into a city that is in transition from the ancient to the modern, reflecting the state of the world in the early 1930s, and they are hard pressed on all sides by assassins and betrayals. Yet, one ally has emerged, an enemy from the past, the dreaded albino Monsieur Zenith, Begg’s nemesis.