Matt Malcolm is a devil-may-care marketing manager who inadvertently discovers an ancient seed that has the ability to extend the normal human lifespan by more than nine hundred years, disease free. Representing a huge pharmaceutical company, he blackmails their competitors who pay up to maintain the status quo. Six months on, however, he loses his job and finds his lover murdered. With the only test crop of The Seed destroyed, a trail of destruction is left over Eastern Europe and North Africa as the rival companies and a religious sect called the Seraphim embroil him in the search for the true source of the wonder drug, known as The Eden Seed.