The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Dave Bigelow, an attorney in New York who is on a cruise in the Aegean Sea, innocently relates a story to a woman, a friend of a friend whom he is meeting for the first time, and finds himself entangled in a murder case involving one of Turkeys leading companies and the highest levels of the Turkish government. A few weeks later, on a business trip to Mexico City, he unexpectedly encounters his estranged brother in a restaurant. His brother is secretive about his reason for being in the Mexican capital. Daves attempt to help him backfires, leading to their captivity by a Mexican drug gang whose identity is unclear. Are these apparently random events linked? One clue is the mysterious Turkish businessman who shares their captivity and who has become an overnight celebrity when a rival gang seizes a wedding party at a cathedral to bargain for his release. They threaten to execute a hostage for every day that passes without the Turks release. The lives of many people, including Daves, hang in the balance. His orderly life working on an antimoney laundering assignment for the Department of Justice has spun out of control.