Timorese police investigator Vincintino Cordero is assigned the case of two youths, rival gang members, found a week apart with their throats slit and a betel quid placed in their mouths. The case distracts him from spending time with FBI Agent Sara Carter before she completes her INTERPOL assignment and heads home to Arizona.

But Carter is facing distractions of her own as the US ambassador and INTERPOL's director pressure her to stay in East Timor. When the fiancé of her friend, police officer Estefana dos Carvalho, goes missing, all signs point to his abduction by whoever is behind the murder of the gang members.

That draws Carter into Cordero's investigation where the stakes, like the dangers, rise. A gang war could be imminent like that which tore the new nation of East Timor apart eight years earlier.

Or young Timorese could be acting out a cult leader's prophecy that those who fought and died for the country's independence will rise from their graves and win a more favourable victory if the right conditions are met. Which of these possibilities do the betel quids in the dead.