As private detective Isaac Bell strives to land a government contract to investigate John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil monopoly, the case takes a deadly turn. A sniper begins murdering opponents of Standard Oil, and soon the assassin kills Bell's best witness. Then the shooter detonates a terrible explosion that sets the victim's independent refinery ablaze.
Bell summons his best detectives to scour the site for evidence. Who is the assassin and for whom did he kill? The murders-shootings, poisonings, staged accidents-have only just begun as Bell tracks his phantom-like adversary worldwide before returning to America for a final, desperate confrontation.