A deafening blast shatters the evening calm of Washington, DC. Beginning with a bomb placed in the sculpture garden of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the philanthropist Richard Palgrave finds he is involved in a threat to destroy the museum and everyone within it. Palgrave and his delightful Buddhist-monk colleagues, along with the director of the museum, Rachel Rabane, follow leads to France, Syria and Iraq (and a possible location of the Garden of Eden) to try to stop the threat from being carried out. As they edge toward the eve of the threatened event, they realize that because of an old friendship Palgrave is intentionally being led not only into the ‘clash of civilizations’ and a world of culture and art but also into the personal psychological realm of someone he comes to know as Evatta M, while engaged in a harrowing pursuit through the chaos of the Middle East – potentially toward destruction.