Zion. 1946. The Navarro woman Nimue gives birth to a baby girl she names Pandora. 1948. The United Nations votes to create the modern state of Israel, sowing the seeds of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Jordan, Curtis Hawk crashes his old Messerschmitt and runs across an odd group of confederates destined to seek the archaeological site of Qumran: Joachim, an Ashkenazi Jew; Moshe Dayan, in the service of the Zionist Haganah paramilitaries; and Reka, who reveals secrets of divided Jerusalem.