A panel from the lost Amber Room looted by the Nazis in 1941 comes on the London art market. Two mutilated bodies are discovered on wasteland outside Moscow’s Yaroslavl Railway station. Initially the two events seem unrelated.

Senior Investigtor Nikishin, troubled by the recent loss of his wife and haunted by the presence of his dead daughter, is assigned the case. Then the murder of a specialist art thief in London and a Bond street dealer on his luxury yacht on the French Riviera set in motion a chain of events that find Nikishin, and his SPBR team, his loyal sergeant Dmitri Roskov, and his forensics specialist the beautiful Tamara Lomakina pitted against the ruthless assassin known only as the Caretaker, who will stop at nothing to achieve the ambitions of his employer - the fanatical billionaire art collector Abel Steele.

But as Nikishin pieces together the 70-year-old puzzle, they realize the forces pitted against them are more powerful and sinister than they anticipated, but when the Caretaker becomes fixated on Tamara, Nikishin realizes he has more than just a crime to solve. The trail takes Nikishin and Tamara on a desperate chase across Russia and northern Europe as they attempt to unravel a complex and sinister conspiracy that reaches to the very top of the Russian political establishment causing economic and political ripples that spread across Europe. When an Israeli Mossad operation codenamed Jericho threatens the possible collapse of the Swiss banking system the stakes become even higher. The clock is ticking for Nikishin and Tamara to outwit the forces pitted against them and solve the mystery and discover the location of the vast treasure hidden in the closing days of the Second World War.