The black-tie gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art promises to be a star-studded evening. Beautiful, young oceanographer Cordelia Stapleton and dashing, urbane archaeologist John Sinclair have flown in from Alexandria, Egypt, to help celebrate ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian culture with New York's elite.

The influential crowd of artists, collectors, scientists, and New York society dine and dance at the museum's historic Temple of Dendur, unaware that terrorists are planning to attack. Fortunately, museum security and police stop the terrorists, but the evening is a disaster.
The next morning, Cordelia and Sinclair learn that an art theft ring struck New York while they were at the museum. All over the city, pieces of Egyptian art have been stolen.

Ted VerPlanck--a pillar of New York society whom Cordelia met the night before--discovers that his penthouse apartment was robbed and the legendary Sardonyx Cup, an ancient Egyptian chalice, is missing. Ted asks John Sinclair to help him recover his precious artifact.

Aided by British and American security forces, Sinclair sets out to find the missing art, which holds clues to where and when a future attack will take place. The action moves from a sprawling ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to a castle on Scotland's rugged coastline, a beautiful two-hundred-foot yacht in the Mediterranean, the mysterious canals of Venice, the premier beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, and ultimately Cairo. Romance sizzles as Sinclair, Cordelia, and Holly Graham are caught in a love triangle, distracted by their emotions, and unknowingly moving closer to mortal danger.

Superstition and science meet head-on. And one question remains unanswered--does the Sardonyx Cup have special powers?