As Graham Eliot digitizes manuscripts in the world's oldest library at the foot of Mount Sinai, a monk reveals the existence of a secret artifact behind the mysterious death of the prominent archaeologist who discovered it almost a century earlier. Now it is lost in the ruins of an Istanbul mansion. But the only photograph of the artifact reveals an even bigger secret-Mount Sinai may actually be somewhere else.

While in Istanbul, Graham learns the graduate student who was with him at the monastery library is missing. His last known location: one of the dozen mountains that may be the biblical Sinai. A forbidden mountain in a forbidden country. Now Graham has to find a way to rescue him without being detected. And in the process he may recover a history with explosive political implications.