Jean-Luc Lucas

1 September 2001. Elliot, an American C.I.A. agent holding top secret information on the immediate future of the world, disappears. His sole aim was to meet his daughter Orlando, whom he abandoned ten years before. Irène, a French agent who used to work with him, and David, his adoptive son, will help him and lead the girl to her father. Chased by William Pound, a strangely poetic psycho, they will defy the dangers of international espionage from Paris to Venice and finally get to Elliot on 11 September 2001.

During the Crusades, Vercors betroths his beautiful daughter Violaine to Jacques. She cannot marry Jacques because she has contracted leprosy, so Jacques marries her younger sister Mara. Jacques and Mara's first child dies soon after its birth, and Mara begs Violaine to return from seclusion to restore the child to life.