Masello, Robert

Fleeing depression over his coma-stricken wife, journalist Michael Wilde travels to the South Pole on an expedition in search of a mysterious vessel carrying an exiled Crimean War deserter, discovering upon arrival the bodies of a young man and a young woman bound and frozen in a block of ice, both apparently alive.

David Franco, a skeptical, young scholar at Chicago's Newberry Library, embarks on an adventure that takes him across continents while he races against time to discover and collect a legendary artifact, but while he finds aid from a beautiful Florentine, Franco is pursued by assassins and, ultimately, must face his own worst nightmare.