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.