Douglas Freeman, a CIA analyst based in North Africa, is forced to question his assignment after he witnesses the brutal and unorthodox interrogation of an Egyptian-American by secret North African police. Anwar El-Ibrahimi is the Egyptian-American chemical engineer whose family emigrated to the States when he was a boy, now suspected of a terrorist act. His pregnant wife, Isabella El-Ibrahimi, does everything in her power to find her missing husband, who has seemingly disappeared during a flight from Cape Town, South Africa to Washington, DC, by enlisting the help of a politically-connected college friend, Alan Smith. Alan, an aide to Senator Hawkins, uncovers the troubling fact that Anwar has been shipped off, on the orders of the CIA’s head of terrorism, Corrinne Whitman, to a third world country for interrogation. Abasi Fawal is the head of the secret prison who has personal problems of his own with a rebellious daughter Fatima and her Islamic fundamentalist boyfriend Khalid.