Max Chêne is a life coach who helps to motivate everybody from professional athletes to government ministers to business executives. After his gambling debts get out of control and his wife throws him out, he is approached to take on a unique client.
A teacher opens a time capsule that has been dug up at his son's elementary school; in it are some chilling predictions -- some that have already occurred and others that are about to -- that lead him to believe his family plays a role in the events that are about to unfold.
Nikki Blue is a dancer at a strip club hidden along a back road in rural New England. Further down the road, Alice, a burnt-out, neurotic college grad with no particular ambitions, spends her days working at a roadside fossil and rock shop.
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is recruited by the Vatican to investigate the apparent return of the Illuminati – a secret, underground organization – after four cardinals are kidnapped on the night of the papal conclave.