In the relentless heat of 1937 Saudi Arabia, oil remains a distant dream-dark and elusive, a treasure buried deep beneath shifting sands. After four years of drilling at Dammam Dome, tensions run high at the CASOC, California-Arabian Standard Oil Company, compound. Six wells, a fortune invested, and no significant results. The future of the Kingdom's oil ambitions hangs in the balance.Officer Rakan bin Abdulaziz, Commander of External Security, is summoned to the site following the mysterious disappearance of the chief chemist, the man responsible for a crucial report that will determine whether the drilling continues. Days later, the chemist's body is discovered in the desert, ravaged by vultures. Officer Rakan is a man searching for peace, perhaps redemption. He finds himself walking a delicate line between tradition, national interests, and international politics. Everyone believes there is oil beneath the sands, and some will kill for it.Meanwhile, a very different journey unfolds in Karachi. Zayd Wallace, a mixed-race orphan born to a British soldier and a Muslim mother, is raised in England by Methodist missionaries. He serves as a soldier for the British Empire. Highly skilled, loyal, and ruthless, Zayd is chosen for a mission no one else can undertake: the assassination of a Muslim cleric whose fiery sermons challenge colonial authority. Disguised as a pilgrim, Zayd travels into the spiritual heart of Islam, wrestling with the contradictions of faith and identity. He questions everything: his orders, his nation, and most of all himself. Zayd undergoes a spiritual awakening and begins to see Islam not just as a doctrine, but as a living truth.Officer Rakan, fresh from solving the murder at Dammam Dome, is given a new task: to track down the British assassin who has infiltrated the Kingdom in disguise. The two men come from different worlds but are heading on a collision course driven by oil, empire, and religion.