New York Times BESTSELLER -- Exciting... hard to put down without
reading one more page. - The Florida Times-Union
The ancient order of the Knights Templar possessed untold wealth and
absolute power over kings and popes . . . until the Inquisition, when
they were wiped from the face of the earth, their hidden riches lost.
But now two forces vying for the treasure have learned that it is not at
all what they thought it was-and its true nature could change the modern
world.
Cotton Malone, one-time top operative for the U.S. Justice Department,
is enjoying his quiet new life as an antiquarian book dealer in
Copenhagen when an unexpected call to action reawakens his hair-trigger
instincts-and plunges him back into the cloak-and-dagger world he
thought he'd left behind.
It begins with a violent robbery attempt on Cotton's former supervisor,
Stephanie Nelle, who' s far from home on a mission that has nothing to
do with national security. Armed with vital clues to a series of
centuries-old puzzles scattered across Europe, she means to crack a
mystery that has tantalized scholars and fortune-hunters through the
ages by finding the legendary cache of wealth and forbidden knowledge
thought to have been lost forever when the order of the Knights Templar
was exterminated in the fourteenth century. But she's not alone.
Competing for the historic prize- and desperate for the crucial
information Stephanie possesses-is Raymond de Roquefort, a shadowy
zealot with an army of assassins at his command.
Welcome or not, Cotton seeks to even the odds in the perilous race. But
the more he learns about the ancient conspiracy surrounding the Knights
Templar, the more he realizes that even more than lives are at stake. At
the end of a lethal game of conquest, rife with intrigue, treachery, and
craven lust for power, lies a shattering discovery that could rock the
civilized world-and, in the wrong hands, bring it to its knees.
