Celebrated Somali diplomat Michael Marco is the executor of the Will of his Indian friend Baldev Vaccher, and accompanies Baldev's daughter Tatiana to Sweden, where unexplained deaths occur in a university town. Returning to an India wracked by terrorist attacks which bear Pakistan's imprint, Marco is reluctant to be enlisted by the Indian Prime Minister to act as a mediator with Pakistan. Deeply troubled by his own rootlessness and personal loss, but conscious of his responsibilities to Tatiana, Marco is drawn into the vortex of her romantic and emotional highs and lows, compounded by the menace of the Maoist insurgency in Bengal.