Michael Gordon, star reporter with a nose for trouble, is heading home after completing a difficult assignment in Iraq. On a Damascus stopover he relays a tip to a fellow American newsman who subsequently ends up in a local camel market with a knife in his back. Even though everyone, including the American legation, seems to want Gordon to leave the country, he feels obliged to find his friend's murderer. Among the red herrings he must sort through in the "World's Oldest City" are an informing card cheat, a beautiful femme fatale, an enigmatic hotel owner, a Frenchman with two aliases, and several sinister Arabs. In short order, Gordon foils Nazi plots to unite the Arab tribes against the Allies and help the Germans seize the Suez Canal.