Ex-agent Cotton Malone's closest friend, Henrik Thorvaldsen, is in serious trouble - and the men who want to kill him are on Malone's doorstep.

Dragged into his friend's dangerous schemes and secretly under pressure from the US government to stop both Thorvaldsen and a sinister group called the Paris Club, Malone discovers that the answers he needs lie in the past, and an astounding treasure that Napoleon took to his grave.