An American art historian attends a diplomat's dinner in Amsterdam where a looming threat of a terrorist attack hangs over the evening.

A grieving professor, facing the thought of spending a holiday season alone, is happy for the distraction when his old student requests he examine her uncle's paintings. His investigation of the artwork leads him to the uncle's mysterious mental break in the midst of the World War II Ally invasion of France.

After he is buried alive by a mysterious figure, a hapless artist begins to think the form of intense and scattered fractals, that evoke his artistic background and tenuous relationship with religious iconography.

Two detectives investigate an unusual murder scene that replicates a Renaissance painting.