Internationally respected Boston heart surgeon Max Dent, MD, a former Mossad assassin, completed his guest lecture in Paris. After leaving the conference center, two men confront him and shoot the surgeon with a tranquilizing dart. Days later, his head clears, and he finds himself restrained in a small jet. The kidnappers brought him to a hospital in Tehran, where he assisted a former heart surgery fellow whom he had trained in life-saving surgery on the dying ayatollah, the supreme leader of Iran. Walking through the hospital, he encounters a group of very sick young men roped together who are speaking Arabic, not native to Iran. At first, Max can't explain their illness.

After the successful surgery, despite the ayatollah's promise of safe passage, Max is assaulted and fights his way out for a ride to the airport and home.

Lilah, Max's live-in girlfriend, a psychiatrist at the same Boston hospital where Max works, travels to Paris to find Max. With Mossad's help, she uncovers video footage that identifies the criminal group and the blonde who abducted Max. After Max and Lilah return to Boston, he is concerned about a conspiracy to overthrow the ayatollah. He sneaks back into Tehran and unearths a domestic plot leveraging portable atomic bombs to unseat the ayatollah, destabilize Iran, and promote a terrorist offensive to shake up the Middle East. Could an Israeli save Iran and the ayatollah?

Max Dent's history as a Mossad assassin catches up with him in a parallel plot of vengeance. The previous year, Dent assassinated the two brothers of Shazia Khan, the sole remaining member of a notorious Saudi Arabian terrorist family. Khan hires a Palestinian terrorist to abduct Lilah as bait to trap Max. Max rushes back from Iran to save Lilah. They return to Israel. Dent plans a return to Iran to save the ayatollah. This unlikely relationship drives the story and produces a surprise twist.