Charlie Gauntlet is a retired lawyer recently married to the much younger Rebecca "Bex" Olesker, a detective sergeant in the London Metropolitan Police's Antiterrorist Branch. Charlie has more or less come to terms with Bex's demanding and dangerous job. But it's harder to stay home when his young wife is facing Alchemist, an unidentified hired assassin who strikes high-profile targets and demands a big payoff.

Meanwhile, Charlie is exploring a remote monastery which may hold the secrets for a new explanation of the Christian faith. But his own journey takes a strange and perhaps perilous turn when he discovers the monks who guard the scrolls in decidedly unholy circumstances.