The Library of Alexandria stood for 600 years and at its high point contained more than 500,000 manuscripts. Fifteen hundred years ago, it vanished. No archaeological trace of the main library has ever been unearthed. Now, Cotton Malone's ex-wife appears at his doorstep, panicked: their son has been kidnapped. Minutes later, Malone's bookshop is attacked - all because he's the only man alive who knows the whereabouts of the Alexandria link, the conduit for locating the missing library. But finding that lost cache of knowledge, truths hidden away for a millenium and a half, will have grave consequences - both for Malone and for the balance of world power.