The father of British spy Kim Philby, a noted Arabist, had been a keen observer of these phenomena and taught his son about them. Powers posits that the mountain, as the speculative last home of Noah's Ark, is also the dwelling place of many djinns, supernatural beings that often take the form of rocks in the Arabian deserts. He has a past embracing anti-Nazi activities in Occupied Paris-where he fell in love with Elena, a Spanish-born Communist operative-and a spectacularly unsuccessful mission on Mount Ararat in 1948, the purpose of which only gradually becomes clear. In 1963, Andrew Hale is summoned to reenter the secret service. Powers (The Anubis Gates, etc.), known hitherto as an expert fantasy writer, has created a mind-bending mix of genres here, placing his gifts for extreme speculative fiction in service of a fantastical spy story involving rivalries between no fewer than four intelligence services: British, French, Russian and American.
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