Vatican Suspense

In the days following the Pope's death, a cardinal is found brutally murdered in a chapel in Rome, his eyes gouged and his hands cut off. Called in for the grisly case, police inspector Paola Dicanti learns that another cardinal was recently found dead; he had also been tortured.

A sacred relic. A hidden agenda. A race to protect history itself. Thalia “Phoe” Phoenix thought she’d seen everything—until she’s recruited by a Vatican emissary to authenticate what might be the real Shroud of Turin. But this mission is no quiet inspection. The relic has vanished… and the trail of clues points to a conspiracy stretching across continents and centuries. As Phoe and Peter Kellerman chase the truth from Rome to the highlands of Scotland, they’re hunted by enemies who will kill to possess the shroud—and the power it may contain. Legends claim it bears not only...

Thirty years ago, the world was in the exploratory stages of creating a technology capable of artificial intelligence. Thirty years later, that technology has been perfected. In a lab somewhere in a remote mountain region in Iran, nanoparticles, or micro-bots, have been created to be self-sustaining and self-reproducing, each day evolving and learning from experience. They have been programmed to be the ultimate predator, devouring everything in their path and leaving nothing behind.

Based on a wealth of documents long buried in the Vatican archives, Prisoner of the Vatican tells the story of the Church's secret attempt to block the unification of Italy and seize control, not in ancient times, but in the late 19th century. For more than 50 years, the pope was a self-imposed prisoner within the Vatican walls, planning to flee Italy, to return only as the restored ruler of Rome and the Papal States.

In a Galveston, Texas lab, a lethal strain has been stolen by a terrorist faction. In New Mexico, the population of a small town is completely wiped out. In Las Vegas, a vicious underground clan called the Community surfaces at night to prey on the weak. In Paris, two old foes of Kimball Hayden reunite as a kill team to hunt him down. Now considered dead by the Vatican, Kimball Hayden is leading a secretive life on the streets of Las Vegas. But when a parish comes under the threat of a vicious mob, he finds himself thrown back into a world of violence.

His name is Joseph Turner, a brave young construction worker, who rescues an imperiled co-worker trapped on a swaying iron girder twenty-four stories high-only to slip and plummet to the pavement below. Horrified onlookers are astonished and the world is stunned by what happens next...Suddenly, miraculously, Joseph Turner is granted a rematch with life. Only this time with a beautiful unusual power. An astounding adventure, a romance of tenderness and passion, a spiritual thriller that spans time and the world-THE SECOND SON is all these, and above all, gripping edge-of-the-seat entertainment.

In Virginia, a Blacksite facility is assaulted with military sophistication to free a homegrown terrorist who once attempted to assassinate FBI Specialist Shari Cohen. Within days, two of America’s most iconic symbols of freedom are razed. In Rome, Kimball Hayden’s demons are at their worst, the man becoming a shell of his former self. But when he learns that Shari Cohen’s assassin is on the loose, he embarks on a trip of rediscovery that unites him with the woman he loves.

While traveling across the United States during the Papal Symposium, the papal plane, Shepherd One, is commandeered by a terrorist cell calling itself the Muslim Revolutionary Front. On board: a nuclear payload with half the yield that destroyed Hiroshima. Their demand to the US government: assassinate the five leading principals of Mossad.

When the Vatican Knights are called upon to seek the Holy Grail of the dark messiahs that is the tome of the Baal Manifesto, Kimball Hayden and his team must go against their most lethal enemy that surrounds himself with tier-one mercenaries. With the manifesto having been mythicized as being created by the master of the Unholy Trinity, the Vatican Knights soon find themselves in a battle against a man who might have the power of Satan behind him.

In France, a member of a secret guild is killed for the secrets he keeps. In Croatia, a stronghold is breached, and a treasure is stolen. At the Vatican, a corrupt pontiff views Kimball Hayden as a threat to his rule. When a Croatian stronghold is breached and scores are killed, a religious icon is stolen that contains a dark particle that’s powerful enough to either create worlds or destroy them. With a corrupt pontiff who sees Kimball Hayden as a threat to his power, Pope Clement XV mobilizes the Vatican Knight without his team to retrieve the dark particle.

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), or Vatican II, is arguably the most significant event in the life of the Catholic Church since the Reformation. The Council initiated, intentionally or not, profound changes not simply within Catholic theology, but in the religious, social, and moral lives of the world's billion Catholics. It also reconfigured, intellectually and practically, the Church's engagements with those outside of it—most obviously with regard to other religions.

Before Kimball Hayden became a Vatican Knight, he was the commander of the Pieces of Eight, a kill squad that worked as part of a black-arm force of the CIA. He kills with impunity and acts with the cold fortitude of a machine. But when he begins to question the morality of his actions and the motives of his superiors, he is placed within the crosshairs by high-end principals who want to see him dead.

In central Syria, villages are razed as young men are conscripted to join the ISIS faction. In a Doctors Without Borders camp which is overrun by members of the Islamic State, people are abducted along with a priest Father Savino. He also happens to be the brother of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. From the green zone in Iraq, Shari Cohen, now a CIA consultant and operator, learns that she must appropriate intel from the resurging ISIS force to stop them from striking international targets.

Kimball Hayden is the commander of an elite commando group known as the Vatican Knights, a black-op force that works for the Church to protect its sovereignty, its interests, and the welfare of its citizenry. But Kimball is being stalked by someone from the past, a soldier who is stronger, faster, and far more brutal - an assassin so deadly not even the Vatican Knights can stop him.

When the Vatican receives a third necrology report that outlines the impending time and death of the top-tier abductee, the Vatican Knights are forced to operate within a small window of opportunity to locate and extract the hostage before the final obituary comes to completion.

In Los Angeles, the niece of an esteemed cardinal of the Vatican is abducted by the Albanian mob. Kimball Hayden, a man without a country or the support of the church, soon finds himself in the crosshairs of an indigenous black-op unit that is trying to terminate him for secrets that could set off a political firestorm. Lacking in numbers, Kimball must prove himself to the Vatican by overcoming an Albanian team of precision assassins and a sanctioned kill team from the United States government.

Quel est le secret des sœurs-servantes de Saint-Michel, société secrète liée aux toutes premières heures du christianisme ? 1209, Sud-Ouest de la France. En charge de la croisade contre l'hérésie cathare, les Dominicains poursuivent dans l'ombre un autre objectif : en finir avec une société secrète, les sœurs-servantes de Saint-Michel, dépositaire depuis plusieurs siècles de mystérieuses reliques liées aux premières heures du christianisme. 1428, Pyrénées. L'Espagne est occupée par les musulmans.

In Egypt, those within the Saint Catherine Monastery are brutally attacked and a secret that has been hidden for more than 3,500 years is stolen. In Zurich, an arms dealer makes an agreement with a band of elite terrorists for one-of-a-kind weapons of mass destruction, for a treasure that was presumed destroyed during the Exodus. When a conversation between two men is covertly videotaped by an operator of the CIA, Vatican Intelligence and the Mossad realize that the partial message received was filled with enigmas.

In Mindanao, Philippines, a terrorist faction holding members of the clergy hostage is summarily liquidated. On the same night in Manila, a separate team of sophisticated thieves with a considerable amount of military training enter a high-tech security facility to steal the coveted Scepter of Light, a staff once used by Saint Peter as he spread the Gospel of Jesus. In Greece, the buyer of the relic learns that the item he purchased for one hundred million in American funds had hit a hurdle, galvanizing his team to aid in the scepter’s recovery in the Philippines.

In the Apuseni mountain range in Romania, it’s said that a fabled Keep made from the bones of Vlad the Impaler’s victims stands high enough to touch the sky. At night, things run through the forest claiming those who get too close to the truth. Some people call them demons and trolls known as the Vladorians; others say they don’t exist at all but are the creations of imagination. So, when Kimball Hayden and his team of Vatican Knights are called to investigate, they discover a horror that’s far greater than folklore.