On October 30th, 1956, a CIA-sponsored coup (code-named “Operation Straggle”) was to take place in Damascus with the support of the Syrian military. The operation was cancelled on October 29th, one day before the planned coup, after Israel, the British and the French launched attacks on the Suez Canal.

History refers to these events as “The Suez Crisis”, and it provoked the Syrian military into refusing to go along with the coup. Two weeks later, the Soviet Union and Syria signed a Pact in which the Soviets promised Syria heavy weapons and other military support in exchange for more political and foreign policy influence.

Alarmed by these events, and suffering an involuntary drawdown of CIA personnel in Damascus, Beirut’s CIA station chief sends two covert operatives into Syria a week later to monitor a Soviet intelligence team that had arrived in Damascus, ostensibly to implement the terms of the Pact. Alan Harper, posing as a freelance investigative reporter, and Anne Small, posing as his Arabic-speaking interpreter, soon discovered the real objective of the Soviet team.

The action is fast-paced as Harper and Anne, at great risk to themselves, fend off the Syrian secret police, a Soviet hit squad, and the Soviet intelligence team itself, in their attempt to disrupt the Soviet operation. .