June, 1942. With its members scattered throughout the desert, the Eighth British Army in North Africa has largely been defeated by the Germans, who, led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, are pushing them back further and further east to Cairo. Alone in the desert, dehydrated and hallucinating, Cpl. John Bramble is able to make his way to a refuge in the middle of the desert, the Empress of Britain Hotel (British in name only), its Egyptian owner/proprietor Farid who would rather he not stay there due to what the Germans would do if Bramble is discovered there. Farid's nightmare comes true when the Germans, including Rommel himself, commandeer the hotel to use as a temporary desert headquarters. Largely recovered by that time, Bramble decides to assume the identity of the hotel's Alsatian waiter, Paul Davos, who was killed when part of the hotel collapsed in a recent German bombing, he still buried under the rubble in the bombed out section of the hotel. It is the way the German officers treat him as Davos and by discovery of some of Davos' papers that Bramble learns that Davos was really a German spy. Bramble's first inclination is to kill Rommel while he has the chance, however he figures that he may be able to do more good in his position being so close to the upper echelon of the German military, his key mission to discover the code "five graves" which seems to be key to the Germans' success in North Africa, and to get the information back to British headquarters in Cairo. Beyond the Germans, another obstacle Bramble has is the only other remaining staff member left at the hotel, the pretty French maid Mouche who has her own very personal mission in having stayed at the hotel in knowing the Germans' ultimate arrival.—Huggo