This book moves between Cairo and British Mandate Palestine in 1941, and the Israel of 1991. In 1941 a reserved English officer falls for a waiflike Viennese Jew trying to flee to Palestine. He betrays her, then tries to save her from the consequences of his action. He too has to flee, at risk both from his British soldiers and the Zionist underground. Fifty years on at the height of the intifada, the son of his brief partnership comes to Israel and Palestine to trace what happened to his father.