The ancient order of the Knights Templar possessed untold wealth and absolute power over kings and popes ...until the Inquisition, when the Knights were wiped from the face of the earth, their riches left hidden -- forever? Cotton Malone is enjoying his quiet new life as an antiquarian book dealer in Copenhagen, when he is unexpectedly plunged back into the cloak-and-dagger world he thought he'd left behind at the U.S. Justice Department. Cotton's former supervisor, Stephanie Nelle, is in Europe on a personal mission: armed with vital clues to a series of centuries-old puzzles, she means to crack a mystery that has tantalized scholars and fortune-hunters through the ages -- by finding the legendary cache of wealth and forbidden knowledge thought to be lost forever when the order of the Knights Templar was exterminated in the 14th Century. But she's not alone. Someone else is competing for the historic prize -- and they are prepared to kill to win. Cotton is soon involved in the perilous race. But the more he learns about the ancient conspiracy surrounding the Templars, the more he realizes that not only lives are at stake. At the end of a lethal game rife with intrigue, treachery and lust for power, lies a shattering discovery that could rock the civilized world -- and, in the wrong hands, bring it to its knees.