"Spirited Aimee Leduc, a private investigator based in Paris, has been introduced to the Cao Dai temple by her partner, Rene, who urges her to learn to meditate as a counterbalance to her frenetic lifestyle. There a Vietnamese nun asks her, as a favor, to pick up a package across town in the Clichy quarter. Aimee is to hand over a check and bring the package back to the temple. But this act of kindness ends in a stranger's death and leaves her with a bullet wound in the arm, a check for 50,000 francs and a trove of ancient jade artifacts whose provenance is a mystery." The French secret service, a group of veterans of the war in Indochina, some wealthy ex-colonials and contending international oil companies all claim the jade. They will stop at nothing to gain possession of it. And the nun has disappeared.