When recently divorced American John Hammond arrives on the Aegean island of Samos, he is unaware of events that happened nearly seven decades earlier that will embroil him in death and violence, and change his life forever.

Late one night he finds Greek fisherman Petros Vangelos mortally wounded in an alley. Vangelos gives Hammond a coded map before he expires. With that map, Hammond becomes the link to a Turkish tramp steamer named Sabiya that sank in a storm in 1945 with a fortune in gold and jewels aboard. Also on the Sabiya, in a waterproof safe, are documents that implicate a long-dead German SS Officer in the theft of tens of millions of dollars in valuables from Holocaust victims and the laundering of those valuables by the Nazi's Swiss banker partner. That partnership helped build a huge banking enterprise that is now run by that Swiss banker's son who will stop at nothing to prevent disclosure of his father's crimes.

Hammond's visit to Samos quickly turns into a roller coaster ride on which he encounters violence, new friendships, and a woman he loves, all of which irrevocably alter the course of his life.