The novel's premise involves a hunt for an ancient biblical book to stave off a planned apocalypse in the Middle East, and features Dr Ava Curzon, an ex-MI6 archaeologist working at the British Museum.

Ava Curzon has returned from Baghdad to the British Museum, and is recruited by Britain’s ultra-secretive MI13 intelligence department to assist in recovering the Turin Shroud, which has been stolen by a Russian special forces team.

Following up a hunch, she becomes involved with Mexican gang in London smuggling war-looted antiquities from the Middle East, and finds herself playing a lethal game over an ancient Aramaic artefact like none she has ever seen before.

After re-establishing contact with Uri, a Mossad assassin, she solves Rasputin’s clues, which lead her to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where she finds an ancient manuscript hidden by a medieval Knight of Saint John.

Finally, in the husk of the ancient Cathar castle of Montségur, where the medieval heretics were burned alive, she has to face Durov, and present him from unleashing his plan of devastation in the Middle East.