The dreams of a pencil pusher longing for adventure and distant shores come true when the maritime transport company where he works sends him on a trip to 1928 French Indochina. But Theodore Poussin is about to get more than he bargained for as he sets sail on the Cap Padaran: a mysterious, poetry-reciting man with ominous predictions about his future follows him everywhere; stories surrounding his late uncle Captain Steene, whose grave he promised his family he would find, are vague and contradictory; and he somehow ends up in the crossfire of a guerilla war near the Chinese border, forced to run for his life and toward even more unexpected events.