The world is in a constant state of flux. Countries, borders, and even civilizations come and go. Who owns what changes with the tides of time. Ownership is a transient concept. When money or value is on the line, the stakeholders line up to profit, and if they don't get what they want, disputes ensue, sometimes lasting decades. Case in point, the Isle of Lewis Chessman, a Norsemen-created set of playing pieces discovered in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis, a small island in the Hebrides archipelago off the coast of Scotland. Over the next, almost two hundred years, the chessmen passed through many hands, ending with 11 pieces in the National Museum of Scotland, 82 in the British Museum, and 1 in the hands of a private collector, who paid 735,000 pounds for a single piece. But Norway, which possesses none, claims ownership because they were carved by Vikings, which irks a Norwegian, chess-obsessed multi-millionaire distiller, Karl Dahl.
Dahl takes the issue into his own hands. He is determined to repatriate the chessmen to Norway. He hires a shady, former sleight-of-hand magician who goes by the name, Mister Engineer. Engineer is an Englishman of Indian descent whose job is to plan and execute a robbery during a chess tournament in London sponsored by Dahl's Aquavit alcohol company. The plan goes seamlessly. Unfortunately, the chessmen delivered to Dahl are fakes. The volatile multi-millionaire decides to eliminate Engineer, who he believes stole the chessmen for himself. He sends his bodyguard to kill Engineer and recover the historic prize.
The Curator of the Medieval Collection at the British Museum also discovers the chessmen returned after being on display at the tournament are replicas. He hires Alastair Hughes, an art and antiques consultant, to recover the chessmen. Hughes is an old acquaintance of Toronto, Private Investigator Axel Webb. Axel is in London on vacation with his research assistant and girlfriend, Zelda Cohen. Axel is the man to contact when something old and valuable is missing. Hughes hires Axel to find the chessmen, but Axel and Dahl aren't the only ones looking for Engineer. Detective Sergeant Fitzgibbon, the man in charge of London's MPS Art and Antiques Unit of the Organized Economic Crime Command, is also on the case.
