It was an innocent and unplanned purchase on a summer's day at a car boot sale. But Alan Cavall and his friends could never have guessed that the old document case - bought cheaply as a token to a stallholder for allowing Alan to listen to one of his favourite rock anthems - concealed a document from one of the 19th Century's greatest scientists, and promised untold wealth. They were not to know that the case had already witnessed a bloody past, and that they were not the first to attempt to disclose the whereabouts of the enigmatic prize concealed in the message.
As they pursue the secret, and become more and more convinced of the legacy's location, their commitment to extracting it means taking an extreme risk. Even though they retrieve the prize, their plans go disastrously wrong, resulting in them becoming the victims of a fluke accident that has them exposed nationally as murderers.
Now, licking their wounds and expecting any moment to be arrested, they could never have predicted that one innocuous event - the finding and decrypting of the document - would lead them all into a murderous chase for an immensely valuable cache of rare strategic materials and being used as bait in a security agency's identification and removal of an internal traitor.