When Texas oil baron Charlie King contacts Sam and Remi Fargo he has an unusual request. He hired an investigator - and good friend of the pair - to locate his missing father in the Far East. But now the investigator has vanished. Would Sam and Remi be willing to look for them both? Though something about the request doesn"t quite add up, Sam and Remi agree to help out. It"s a journey that takes the Fargos to Tibet, Nepal, Bulgaria, India and China. They get mixed up with black-market fossils, a centuries-old puzzle chest, the ancient Nepali Kingdom of Mustang, a balloon aircraft from a century before its time . . . and an extraordinary skeleton that might turn the history of human evolution on its head. And not forgetting a few unfriendly people with guns and itchy trigger fingers . . .