When the State Department sends Harvard PhD student Ivan Welland to Chechnya, he sees it as a perfect chance to gather material for his dissertation. Little does he know that he will soon become involved with an imam in a local mosque who turns out to be one of the most dangerous Islamist jihadist terrorists in the Muslim world. Thus begins an exciting and challenging mission in the life of this bookish academic. He discovers the headquarters of a council of caliphs that directs terrorist attacks worldwide, and he uses his academic training to come up with a startling plan for mounting a successful counterterrorist attack on jihadists everywhere, while at the same time avoiding the tragedy of collateral damage.