When American John Hammond arrives on the Aegean island of Samos, he is unaware of events that happened nearly six decades earlier that will embroil him in death and violence, and change his life forever. Late one night he finds Petros Vangelos, a Greek fisherman, lying mortally wounded in an alley. Hammond becomes the link between Vangelos and a Turkish tramp steamer that sank in a storm in 1942, carrying a fortune in gold and jewels. On board this boat, in a waterproof safe, are documents that implicate a German SS Officer in the theft of valuables from Holocaust victims and the laundering of those valuables by the Nazi's Swiss banker partner.