Italian Policeman Aurelio Zen is posted to remote Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot. Beneath the surface of a tight-knit, traditional community he discovers that violent forces are at work. There has been a brutal murder. Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth. But his mission is complicated by another secret which has drawn strangers from the other side of the world - a hunt for buried treasure launched by a single-minded player with millions to spend pursuing his bizarre and deadly obsession.