Jacob Klein was an employee of Crosstime Traffic. In 2096, he took his wife Tiffany and his daughter Annette on a trading trip to an alternate where the Great Black Deaths wiped out 80% of the population of Europe. As Jews were frequently persecuted in the Kingdom of Versailles, the rump of France, the Kleins disguised themselves as Arabs from Marseille. Jacob Klein called himself Muhammad al-Marsawi.