Past Lives - Jeff Gold - Bog

"Past Lives: The Covenant," is a psychological thriller involving murder, international art fraud, deception and the robbery of one of the world's greatest treasures, The Sapphire Dragon, a dagger and sheath made for a Chinese Emperor over a thousand years ago. Three men, Jimmy, Victor and Frank steal The Sapphire Dragon with inside help from Chicago's Field Museum. Jimmy, out of greed kills Victor and Frank with the treasured dagger at the scene of the crime, which spawns a covenant of revenge and retribution. However, before dying, Frank a large man follows Jimmy to the arranged hiding place in a cemetery, knocks him unconscious and buries him alive. We hear Jimmy waking up in the crypt. He struggles trying to discover where he is. Finally, he knows and lets out a scream that no one hears. Through the passion and belief of reincarnation, the three men are back in this century. The two betrayed partners, Victor and Frank find each other in today's world and come up with a plan to find Jimmy and learn where the valuable Sapphire Dragon is that was never recovered. Victor and Frank have to find a way to pry into Jimmy's mind because Jimmy, today is another person and has no clue about any of this. Victor and Frank have to find a way to delve into his mind and take him back to the past century to get him to remember. During this process, Victor and Frank arrange with a major criminal Swiss art dealer to sell him the Sapphire Dragon. They decide to prepare a fake in the event that they cannot get the original; they decide to sell him the fake one anyway. The Swiss is wanted in the US for art fraud and since art fraud is linked to money laundering and drug trafficking, he is wanted on those charges too. As a result the Swiss cannot enter the country so they arrange to meet in the Bahamas to sell the Sapphire Dragon. While the Swiss does agree to the deal, the plot is filled with corruption and evil doing on both sides and he pulls a jaw-dropper on the conspirators. The Interpol has been tracking them and the conspirators use their escape route through Mexico while the Swiss makes it back to Switzerland where Interpol is waiting to extradite him back to the US.