The tombs have always been there beneath the city of Jerusalem. At first obscure, then hidden, then lost entirely, it was a place where death went about its business unseen. Where the living had become the dead and their mourners had in turn been mourned. And then, in 1968, a discovery is made that is so shattering that the reverberations echo through time. For the tombs also guard a secret: a 2,000-year-old prize that men would kill- and die- for.

In the same year, in Dublin, young Patrick Canavan experiences the intense passion of first love for Francesca Contarini. But Francesca shares the secret of the tomb and her knowledge is deadly with repercussions that stretch far into the future. More than twenty years later, Canavan finds himself prisoner of a KGB agent, being questioned about an ancient brotherhood: The Brotherhood of the Tomb.