What dread secret is The Vatican protecting at all costs? Which lives will be sacrificed to keep an awful truth buried behind a code of silence? “My name is Monsignor Capelletti,” the voice replied. “I’m the chief of staff for the papal nuncio to the United States, Francis Cardinal Kettering. Your name was given to me as someone to be trusted, someone who can help. And I very much need your help.” “Why, has your cardinal murdered somebody?” Justin asked with a deliberate lightheartedness meant to convey to Capelletti that his use of dramatics was not necessary. “That’s exactly what’s happened, Mr. Scott,” the priest said, his words barely audible. After hearing that utterance from a terrified priest, ex-FBI agent Justin Scott soon finds himself in the fight of his life. Hired by the Vatican to ferret out the truth – or so it says, Justin uncovers a hair-raising conspiracy involving powerful Vatican prelates and Italian and Russian crime syndicates, all racing against the clock and each other to take possession of the richest prize in Christendom. With time fast running out, Justin’s high-stakes quest leads him to the very steps of the Throne of Peter, then back to Washington DC where he confronts a psychopathic murderer in a cat-and-mouse stalking that plays out to its deadly finish on the mean streets of the nation’s capital.

Past and present collide in the opening pages of The Barbarossa Covenant when retired FBI agent Justin Scott becomes a target for assassination while en route to Rome at the behest of the Vatican’s secretary of state. Before learning why, the reader is whisked back to 1940 wartime London where British Intelligence is working feverishly on an audacious plan to thwart the imminent cross channel Nazi invasion. With England’s fate hanging in the balance, a papal emissary hand-delivers a sealed letter to Adolf Hitler from a source no mortal would dare ignore or disobey. The letter is lost to history in 1945 with the fall of Berlin—only to surface without warning in the Vatican seven decades later. Penned by an unimpeachable source, it states with a God-given certitude that the time of the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) is now. A very troubled pope wants Justin to authenticate or disprove both message and messenger—an admitted all but impossible task as the Doomsday Clock readies to strike midnight.