Gideon Crew – brilliant scientist, master thief – has just lost his job. It is the least of his worries: he has only months to live.

Effective Engineering Solutions has shut up shop; its enigmatic boss has disappeared without a trace. While clearing their desks, Gideon and his colleague Manuel Garza discover a computer programme that, left running for five years, has finally cracked the code it was attacking. It has deciphered the infamously enigmatic hieroglyphs of the Phaistos Disk. For a century, the ancient stone tablet defied interpretation, but now Gideon and Manuel have a lead on an undiscovered civilization, long-lost beneath the sands of the Egyptian Sahara.

As a man doomed by an inevitably fatal brain syndrome, Crew needs little persuasion to embark on one final adventure. As Manuel and Gideon travel across the world and deep into the desert, the odds are against them – but as Crew will prove, there is no such thing as too great a risk for a man living on borrowed time.