The disappearance of Paul Billson, clerk in an engineering firm, seems a minor matter to security consultant, Max Stafford. But when routine enquiries result in Stafford being beaten up, he goes after Billson, who has impulsively taken off for the Sahara, where his air ace father had crashed during the London to Cape Town air race forty years earlier. A recent newspaper smear implied that Billson's father had rigged the crash to profit from an insurance scandal. Now Billson is intent on locating the plane and clearing his father's name - but someone is determined that he should never find it.