December 22, 2000 is a day of dramatic confluence in the life of Joop Koopman, a Dutchman living in California. It is the day he celebrates his daughter Miriam's seventeenth birthday, meets his old friend Philip, with whom he has been out of touch for eighteen years and who now works for the Israel Ministry of Defense, and crosses paths with Errol Washington, aka Godzilla, the owner of God's Gym, a Venice health club Miriam frequents. Philip has sought out Joop for reasons that are more than personal, and Joop, in turn, has no choice but to let himself be carried along by political developments that he has previously tried to avoid, but that now inescapably control his life.