Dutch journalist Piet Maas is tasked by his editor at the (fictional) news magazine World Reporter with tracking down the mystery woman – who has been identified as the general's mistress, Lucia Bernardi – and getting the full story.

After lengthy detective-work he succeeds and discovers that the general was at the heart of a planned uprising of Kurdish nationalists inside Iraq.

Having filed a report of events to his editor, Maas quits the magazine to throw in his lot with Lucia and together they conspire to sell the notes to the highest bidder.

The novel describes in detail the anonymous phone calls, safe houses, elaborate aliases and clandestine meetings required to carry this out, and includes a number of tense scenes.

In the final act they call in the help of a con-man who Lucia used to work with and manage to extract payment from not one but two rival agents, square things with the police, and rehabilitate Maas with his employers, before driving off with the loot.

The title itself thus adds to the numerous comments throughout the text which help to create the novel's comically subversive and amoral tone.