"On a routine intelligence gathering mission in Tehran, Jack Ryan, Jr., has lunch with his oldest friend, Seth Gregory, an engineer overseeing a transcontinental railway project. As they part, Seth slips Jack a key, along with a perplexing message. The next day Jack is summoned to an apartment where two men claim Seth has disappeared--gone to ground with funds for a vital intelligence operation. Jack's oldest friend has turned, they insist. They leave...

On a journey that will take them to Tibet, Nepal, China, Italy, and Siberia, the Fargos find themselves embroiled with black-market fossils, an ancient Tibetan kingdom, a lost landmass in the North Sea, Stone Age ostrich egg shards inscribed in a cryptic language, a pair of battles separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years ... and a skeleton that could just turn the history of human evolution on its head.

For years, Jack Ryan, Jr. and his colleagues at the Campus have waged an unofficial and highly effective campaign against the terrorists who threaten Western civilization. The most dangerous of these is the Emir. This sadistic killer has masterminded the most vicious attacks on the West and has eluded capture by the world's law enforcement agencies. Now the Campus is on his trail.