When professor Lodge Benthic buys a jeweled Egyptian box from a Russian in Kiev, the man who sold it to him is murdered and the professor is drawn violently into the hunt for an ancient archive. The adventure involves the Russian mafia, Russian bikers, the CIA, the Vatican and a beautiful, but tough Russian woman. The professor and his fellow adventurers must find the archive before their pursuers, to protect the precious secret it contains. The box turns out to be the key to an archive containing much of the ancient lore thought to have been lost in the fire at the library of Alexandria, but more than that, it contains a secret about God and the world we inhabit, and each of the searchers wants it for their own reasons.