At the same time, Michael O'Malley, a Texan with a mysterious past, wants to make a deathbed confession to his son Ry, who has run special ops in Afghanistan against al Queda and the Taliban, and has physique, skills and connections to rival James Bond. But Ry arrives late, after Michael O'Malley's other son, Father Dominic O'Malley, a priest, hears what he had to say. Just after Father Dom gets the gist of his father's bizarre tale to Ry, Father Dom is killed in his church by Yasmine Poole, a methodical, brilliant woman who gets orgasmic thrills from killing and works for her lover, billionaire and political kingmaker Miles Taylor. Yasmine will not rest until everyone she is asked to kill is dead.
Yasmine hunts Ry, too, and eventually Ry and Zoe team up to try to elude the different people after them as well as to figure out what's going on. What's on the film that some of the pursuers want? Who are the would-be murderers working for? What is the altar of bones? What haven't their parents told them about their earlier lives?
The action shifts quickly from the U.S. to Paris to Budapest to Russia. Along the way, Zoe learns slowly that she is the new keeper of the altar of bones--located behind a waterfall in Siberia--that offers anyone who drinks it immortality, but at a dreadful cost. The line of keepers and the secret of the altar of bones go back centuries and involve, among others, Ivan the Terrible, Rasputin, Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy. (Carter has a stunning explanation for the assassination of President Kennedy--one that would surprise even the most extreme conspiracy theorist!) As Zoe and Ry continue to elude the people who want them dead, they engage in non-stop repartee that slowly turns tender, especially as they discover the shocking truth about their parents' pasts.
Philip Carter is a pseudonym for a bestselling author in a different genre.