On the morning after the Venice Preservation Society's annual black-tie gala, art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon enters his favorite coffee bar to find General Cesare Ferrari, commander of the Art Squad, awaiting his arrival. The Italian police have made a startling discovery in the Amalfi villa of a murdered South African shipping tycoon - a secret vault containing an empty frame and stretcher matching the dimensions of The Concert by Johannes Vermeer, one of thirteen works of art stolen from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990.
General Ferrari asks Gabriel to track down the Vermeer with the help of an unlikely ally, a beautiful Danish computer hacker and professional thief. Gabriel soon discovers the painting is part of an illicit billion-dollar business deal involving a man code-named the Collector.
The missing masterpiece is the lynchpin of a conspiracy that could plunge the world into a conflict of apocalyptic proportions. To foil the plot, Gabriel must carr
