On a bright, late-winter morning in Rome. a terrible explosion rips a hole in the Israeli embassy. Moments later, four gunmen cut down the survivors as they stagger from the burning building.

 Art restorer Gabriel Alton, working in Venice on an altarpiece, is hastily recallad to Israel and drawn back into the heart of a secret service he had hoped to leave behind. For the repercussions of the blast have led to a disturbing revelation: a dossier that strips away Allon's secrets and lays bare his history. A dossier that fell into terrorist hands. Now Allon must track an etusive master terrorist across a landscape drenched in generations of blood. And soon the trail turns in on itself. until-finally-he can no longer be certain who is stalking whom...