The Winter Palace

Larh is called to the desert west of Cairo to examine a World War II truck which has been discovered by an archeological dig, covered in sand deep in a wadi. Inside there are the bodies of two army deserters and the kit bags of two more, together with some antiquities stolen from the Cairo museum. Larh has been hired by the grandchildren of one of the missing men, Major Ruskin, to find out what happened to him.

It becomes clear that Major Ruskin had a companion, an American journalist Barbara Withers, and that he has an objective, to find a cave in the hills opposite Luxor that his father found years before, and which holds priceless ancient scrolls.

Through many trials, Larh and the Ruskin grandchildren find the cave, and its tragic secrets, but the ancient scrolls themselves cause a major event in the religious community, especially the Egyptian Coptic church which tries to control their dissemination. It is a agreed for them to be examined by an international team at the Winter Palace hotel in Luxor. But this symposium becomes a target for insurgents who come across the open desert from the unstable countries to the west.