A human being, with behaviors normally both vicious and gentle, can be transformed into little more than an animal when caged. Sufi-trained secret policeman - Inspector Mustafa Awad - has been sent to the far side of the world, to live for a year among the enemy, to discover this truth for himself. A brutal murder and the season's first smothering blizzard mark the day of Inspector Awad's arrival. Inside the underground cities and towns, safe and secure below the heavy snowpack, hidden footsteps echo unheard down enclosed streets. At night, after curfew, with only the softly-humming late-night taxis on the move, dark figures are slipping by, purposes unseen. How much information does it take to see the world clearly? "If you think you've figured it out, then that's not it.," laughs Minister Jaffa, Inspector Awad's mentor, when asked to define the nature of reality. There are no easy answers, just an endless struggle against the stifling grip of unwarranted certainty. With the gruesome unsolved murder haunting the North American Regional Coalition's own secret police force, to which he's been assigned as acting Officer, Inspector Awad's life is thrown into turmoil by an act of stunning betrayal.