A man sits in the Hôtel des Solitaires in Khartoum, waiting for the police. To pass the time, he writes down his memories and reads the diaries of Charles Gordon, who was beheaded by rebels in 1885 while serving as the British governor-general of the Egyptian province of Sudan. The police officers want to question him about the death of Else Sutter, a young archaeologist who mysteriously lost her life during excavations in the legendary royal city of Meroe. She had recently arrived in the country to take a position as an assistant to Heinrich Vollender, an opaque scholar who digs for Christian antiquities in the Sudanese desert. There are indications that Vollender had previously worked as an East German spy, but no one can prove it. However, in the case of Else Sutter's death, he must have had a hand in it.