A deafening blast shatters the evening calm of Washington, DC. Beginning with this bomb placed in the sculpture garden of the national museum of contemporary art, the philanthropist Richard Palgrave finds he is involved in a threat to destroy the entire museum and everyone within it ‘before the next moon.’ Palgrave and his extraordinary Buddhist-monk colleagues, along with the director of the museum, follow leads to France, Syria and Iraq (and a possible location of the Garden of Eden) to try to stop the threat from being carried out. As they edge toward the eve of the threatened event, they realize that because of an old friendship Palgrave is intentionally being led not only into the ‘clash of civilizations’ but also into a world of culture and art, while engaged in a harrowing pursuit through the chaos of the Middle East – potentially toward the jasmine scented arms of destruction.

This is book two of the Swan-knight series but is not a sequel to Swan-Knight Noose and can be read as a stand-alone novel.