The late-night visit of a Russian Orthodox priest draws Yuri Nevsky into a struggle by would-be leaders of post-Soviet Russia to possess a treasure cache created for Czar Nicholas II to use in an exile that never came. At once he is caught up in a lethal web with strands stretching from Imperial Russia to Paris in the '20s, Nazi-held Odessa in 1942, and the Kirgiz Steppe in 1952.  Scheming, betrayals, tangled cross-purposes, and murders in the past and present confuse the hunt and threaten to cost him his life.  If he’s to survive and avenge the murder of the gentle priest, he must summon up all his cunning to solve the riddle of the three treasure cubes before the contenders gather to plunder the final one marked Anastasia Nikolayevna!