New York City, New 12 months’s weekend, 2001. Jillian Guthrie, a troubled young journalist, stumbles onto a tantalizing mystery: the same man, unaged, stands alongside Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Gandhi in three different photographs spanning eighty-five years of history.

In another part of town, Will—an enigmatic thirty-three-year-old of immense charm, wit, and intelligence—looks forward to the new year with hope and trepidation. Haunted by his key previous and shadowed with a harmful stranger, he finds himself the thing of a rigorous manhunt spearheaded by an ambitious Vatican emissary and an seniors previous UN envoy named Hanna.

Through the next forty-eight hours, a catastrophic event unites Will, Jillian, and Hanna—and puts them in the crosshairs of a centuries-old international conspiracy. Collectively, the three must unravel a historical curse that stretches back again two millennia and beyond, and encounter a primal wicked that threatens their lives and hundreds more.