Former aid worker Freeman Lockhart is blackmailed into spying on his former Jordanian friend and co-worker Omar al-Baroody in order to prevent an act of terrorism against Washington's highest power brokers.

"After fifty years in hiding, the Nazi war criminal known as the Butcher of Spiegelgrund has finally been tracked down by Father Anthony Fowler, a CIA operative and a member of the Vatican's secret service. He wants something from the Butcher--a candle covered in filigree that was stolen from a Jewish family many years before. But it isn't the gold Fowler is after. As Fowler holds a flame to the wax, the missing fragment of an ancient map that uncovers...