It is 1951 and a storm is raging in Guayaquil when Edward Hannah boards a plane on its way to Peru's capital, Lima and so begins a tale of pirates, treasure islands, looted Nazi gold, terrorists and KGB assassins. Hannah is Joseph Keating's best friend who dies in Austria at the end of WWII as a result of a mysterious car accident leaving him with a treasure map and an enigmatic black notebook that belonged to a U-Boat commander. At the start of the New Millennium Elliott Shepherd, a journalist and adventurer, finds himself in possession of the map and the notebook and sets off to find the treasure. In London he meets Natalia, a beautiful Chechnyan art dealer who is involved with Esteban Blanco, a Colombian drugs baron. Elliott Shepherd is dragged down into an underworld that he is not prepared for where the risks of death are high but where the payoff is a king's ransom.