The Eight

In 1972, American computer expert Catherine Velis takes an assignment in Algeria and is drawn into a deadly hunt for the Montglane Service, a fabled jeweled chess set once gifted to Charlemagne, whose pieces are said to encode a formula of unlimited power. Two centuries earlier, during the French Revolution, a novice nun named Mireille is charged with smuggling the scattered pieces out of Montglane Abbey to keep them from those who would assemble the set and seize its secret. The two women's stories interlock across time as rival factions race to gather the pieces, with the chessboard itself becoming the map of a conspiracy that spans the globe and the centuries.